Sputter ion pumps find extensive use in high vacuum systems where a "clean" vacuum is desired. In contrast to other common UHV pumps, such as turbo molecular pumps and diffusion pumps, ion pumps have no moving parts and use no oil. They are therefore clean, need little maintenance, and produce no vibrations. These advantages make ion pumps well-suited for use in scanning probe microscopy and other high-precision apparatuses. 

The compact switched mode triode sputter ion pump power supply made in BARC is based on a half bridge dc to dc converter operating at 20kHz resulting in a drastic size reduction of around 75% over conventional mains frequency operated ion pump power supplies. This supply can be used with Triode Sputter Ion Pumps having pumping speeds up to 140 lps and for Thin film deposition by DC magnetron sputtering technique.

Facility and Manpower Requirement

One electronics engineer and one technical assistant with general electronics test and assembly facility is sufficient. Experience in working with high voltage devices is expected.

Conventional Sputter ion pump power supplies tend to be heavy and bulky as they operate on the mains frequency viz. 50Hz. Our design is based on the proven leakage inductance high frequency transformer followed by a rectifier cum voltage multiplier. This power supply is based on a half bridge dc to dc converter operating at 20kHz resulting in a drastic size reduction of around 75% over conventional power supplies. This in turn results in a compact vacuum system with a smaller footprint. Our compact switched mode triode sputter ion pump power supply is rated for an open circuit voltage in the range of -6kV to -7kV with a short circuit current rating of 200mA. This supply can power triode sputter ion pumps of capacities up to 140 liters / second. A microcontroller circuit is used to display the various parameters, implement the Trip logic and provide a PC interface. 

Sputter ion pumps find extensive use in high vacuum systems where a "clean" vacuum is desired. In contrast to other common UHV pumps, such as turbo molecular pumps and diffusion pumps, ion pumps have no moving parts and use no oil. They are therefore clean, need little maintenance, and produce no vibrations.

The compact switched mode triode sputter ion pump power supply made in BARC is based on a half bridge dc to dc converter operating at 20kHz resulting in a drastic size reduction of around 75% over conventional mains frequency operated ion pump power supplies.

A direct mains operated  half bridge chopper feeds power to a ferrite core leakage inductance transformer, the output of which is boosted by a rectifier cum voltage doubler to generate a voltage in the range of -6kV to -7kV.  A microcontroller based circuit is used to display the various parameters, implement the Trip logic and provide a PC interface.

SPECIFICATIONS