Gerald W. White, White Engineering Corp.
Magion deposition is a new process by which virtually any material may be tightly bonded to nearly any other material for any reason. This process uniquely utilizes ionization phenomena to impart high energy to the atoms of plating material whereby bonding is assured by penetration of these high energy depositant ions into the outer atomic surface of the object to be plated, which is referred to as the "substrate". In the actual working of the process, which is performed in a vacuum system, the plating material is vaporized yielding a continuous flux of atomic sized vapor atoms. These atoms become ionized by a twofold mechanism, collision with electrons spiraling in a magnetic field as well as by resonance with photons in a radio frequency (rf) transmission field. The t-f field also has the beneficial effect of building a negative charge on non conductors present in the field. This causes both conducting and non-conducting substrates to become attractive targets for the high energy, accelerating ions. This allows for the process to treat both metals and elastomers as equals. The three dimensional properties of the process are unusually good. One of the first arenas for success was the plating of electronic components such as semiconductors and printed circuits where through hole or side step coverage can be of paramount importance." This thin film process eliminates over a dozen wet chemistry plating steps in device manufacture resulting in a superior product at a much lower cost. Perhaps the biggest bonus of all is the elimination of wet chemistry waste products that must be disposed of at a very high cost. Contemporaneous with the advancement of the Magion process has been metallurgies appropriate for the specific problems at hand. The development of specific metallurgies, most not capable of deposition in the right alloy form by any process, was essentially necessary before the Magion process could be employed to yield a finished product. One gauge of success to date is to note the current licensees and their field of usage. Many of these will be discussed at length in the body of this paper. An important consideration will be protection of the environment that this technology offers. The best way of dealing with pollution is to remove the source of its generation. New developments in elastomeric seal technology aid in pollution control.