Temperature control of metal strip during high-rate vacuum coating

•Novel equipment for effective cooling of metal strips in high-rate vacuum coating was developed.•Demonstrated heat transfer coefficients amount up to 1000 W/m2 K.•The cooling effect corresponds to heat input during high-rate physical vapor deposition.•A controlled thermal substrate management for metal strips becomes possible.

Electron beam evaporation with deposition rates of hundreds of nanometer per second is predestined to fit large throughput. In a few cases, high-rate vacuum depositions demand effective cooling of the substrate to exploit their potential, otherwise substrate or layer temperature represents limiting factors. Therefore a new kind of cooling equipment for vacuum coating of metal strips was developed. As a result, the practical realized heat transfer coefficient (HTC) was increased from 50 W/m2 K for common cooling drums up to 1000 W/m2 K. The demonstrated heat transfer coefficients describe a distinctive performance increase compared to known state of the art. For the first time, a 10 μm aluminum high-rate deposition was realized without any alloying with steel strip. Extensions concerning the deposition rate or deposition of thick layers onto thin metal foils become feasible.