Physical vapor deposition is unlocking new capabilities for flexible substrates where traditional atmospheric inks often hit their limits.
In our latest TechBlick interview, Ali Rahimi Ali sat down with Liz Josephson, VP of Commercial Operations at Intellivation, to discuss how their unique approach to functional coatings is filling critical gaps in the printed electronics market.
Rather than additive printing, Intellivation utilizes advanced physical vapor deposition combined with highly precise subtractive patterning. Here is how their technology is shifting the paradigm:
Advanced Subtractive Patterning: After depositing a complete physical vapor coating, Intellivation uses selective laser patterning to subtractively remove material. They can precisely adjust depth to remove specific layers within a complex multi-layer stack.
Multi-Functional Coatings: Their systems deposit sophisticated layer stacks featuring specialized electrical, optical, and barrier properties directly onto flexible substrates.
High-Performance Applications: Intellivation is developing unique layer stacks tailored for demanding environments, driving innovations in space and aeronautics, advanced energy generation and storage, medical devices, and flexible electronics.
Liz noted that navigating the intersection of additive and subtractive manufacturing requires deep, technical conversations—making TechBlick’s focused, intimate platform the ideal venue to connect with industry leaders and explore complex integration challenges.
Watch Ali’s full interview below to explore the benefits of subtractive physical vapor deposition, and be sure to connect with the Intellivation team at TechBlick Berlin! 👇
Loveland, CO — In this role, Haase leads Intellivation’s mechanical, electrical and controls engineering teams, supporting the development and delivery of high‑performance vacuum web coating systems. Since joining the company in 2023, he has rapidly expanded his vacuum-technology expertise while helping translate complex requirements into clear design direction and strong day‑to‑day execution across the team.
“Nick has earned the trust of the team and our customers through consistent leadership and a strong ability to turn challenging requirements into practical, production‑ready solutions,” said Mike Simmons, President & CEO of Intellivation. “His growth has been impressive, and we’re excited to see him continue elevating our engineering organization in this new role.”
Haase holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. Based in Colorado, he enjoys outdoor activities, photography, music, and football.
About Intellivation
Intellivation designs and delivers advanced vacuum web coating systems and related solutions that help customers accelerate development and achieve reliable production results. Intellivation provides OEM state of the art roll-to -roll and custom solutions for depositing functional coatings on flexible substrates. The Application Lab at Intellivation offers the ability to do process and product development for complex and novel applications requiring materials for lightweight, flexible applications in a wide range of industries.
Adhesion is a key element of a high-performance thin film coating. While there are some substrate and coating material sets which provide satisfactory adhesion without any specialized treatment of the substrate prior to deposition, in most cases adhesion performance is improved by in-situ treatment immediately prior to vacuum deposition. There are several mechanisms by which this occurs, as we will describe in further detail. The goal is to increase the surface energy of the substrate to improve adhesion of the coating. Various applications have different thresholds for adhesion performance, and some coatings are more vulnerable to adhesion failure, such as thick multi-layer coatings which may have significant levels of stress in the coating stack. Other benefits of in-situ substrate plasma treatment include fully curing or reacting polymers which may be uncured on the surface of the substrate, and to drive water vapor out of the surface layer of the substrate.
Vacuum deposited thin film adhesion is inherently related to the surface condition of the substrate. Rolls of polymer films often arrive on cores that may have been stored for weeks or months after manufacturing before being loaded into a vacuum roll coater. Warehouse conditions of varying humidity, temperature and contamination impact the surface of the polymer which is no longer the same as it was when it first came off the manufacturing line. Preparing this surface to a controlled state using in-situ plasma treatment is required to optimize thin film coating product quality and consistency. Plasma treatment will prepare the surface for improved adhesion by removing contaminants and/or increasing surface energy. Plasma treatment removes unwanted contaminants from the polymer surface and creates bond scissions on the surface that provide sites for bonding to the first layer of the vacuum deposited thin films.
The combination of plasma energy, line speed and gas composition are bundled into a parameter known as the dose. The film adhesion and surface energy are a function of the dose applied to the surface. Figure 1 provides a general graphical representation of the relationship between adhesion and surface energy. The black curve represents a quantitative film adhesion score as commonly used in an ASTM D3359-23 100 cell X-Hatch test; it is represented on a scale of 0 to 5. The yellow line represents the surface energy of the treated surface in dynes/cm.
Figure 1. General Film Adhesion and Surface Energy as a function of Plasma Treatment Dose
The film adhesion and surface energy curves are divided up into three zones. Zone A represents under treatment with the surface energy still increasing and the film adhesion not optimal. This is a result of minimal bond scission and/or surface contaminants not fully removed.
Zone B represents an area where contaminants are removed, and bond scission density is high enough that the first deposited layer meets adhesion requirements for the product.
Zone C represents when the surface has been over-treated, the film adhesion begins to drop and the surface energy plateaus. This area represents damage to the substrate that weakens the substrate to the point when film adhesion is stronger than the cohesive strength of the substrate itself.
Plasma surface treatment of substrates in R2R Vacuum coaters is the preferred method of treating a surface for vacuum deposited thin films on flexible materials. Plasma surface treatment is suitable for a variety of materials including, but not limited to, PET, PEN, Polyimide, Flexible Glass and metal foils. Intellivation systems are all manufactured with plasma pre-treatment hardware to enable production of high quality, well-adhered thin film coatings for both production and development.
1. Adhesion requirement for vacuum thin films 2. Surface Energy vs Treatment Dose a. Surface Energy in Dynes/cm 3. O2 vs Argon vs other chemistries 4. Plastic Substrate a. Breaking bonds vs damaging substrate. 5. Metallic Substrates a. Removal of Oil and processing chemicals 6. Glass substrates
Vacuum coating technologies for flexible substrates unlock a wide range of industrial applications, enabling advancements across sectors like electronics, energy, aerospace, packaging and more.
The flexibility, versatility and precision deposition of the different vacuum technologies allows for simple single layer stacks up to multi-layer, multi-pass complex materials which can provide optical, electrical or mechanical properties depending on the end use.
By Mike Simmons, Mark George and Liz Josephson, Intellivation LLC
Producing multilayer dielectric coatings via reactive magnetron sputtering on a large-area web is efficient but challenging due to the need for precise reactive gas distribution and concentration control. Ensuring excellent cross-web and down-web uniformity of the layers is essential for high-tech applications. By using in-situ precision optical methods, cross-web uniformity of reactively deposited dielectric coatings can be measured and adjusted quickly; this is crucial for producing high-performance multilayer coatings.
Characterization of the sputtered layers is done in a roll-to-roll (R2R) sputter vacuum coater by fine-tuning the reactive sputter controller, achieving baseline properties of each single layer. Transitioning to R2R deposition and using in-situ optical measurements ensures satisfactory cross-web uniformity for each single layer, which then sequentially are deposited to form a complex multilayer coating. Validating these processes in-situ accelerates the development of new dielectric materials and multilayer designs.
