Patent ID: 8526104

Claim:
A method of depositing Mo/Si thin films on the surface of a substrate using plasma ion assisted deposition, the method having the steps of: providing a vacuum chamber and within said chamber: providing a substrate on which a coating is to be deposited; providing a Mo coating material source and a Si coating material source, and sequentially vaporizing said Mo material and said Si material using an electron beam (e-beam) to provide a coating material vapor flux for each of said Mo and Si materials, said each of said coating material vapor fluxes passing from said material source through a reversed mask to said substrate; providing plasma ions from a plasma source; rotating said substrate at a selected rotation frequency f; and sequentially depositing a layer of said Mo coating material and a layer of said Si coating material on said substrate to form a Mo/Si coating period and bombarding each of said coating layers and said period with plasma ions at least during and after said material deposition process to densify and smooth each layer, and repeating said deposition step a plurality of times to form a Mo/Si coating having a plurality of periods on said substrate; wherein side shields are provided between each of said Mo and Si coating material sources to prevent contamination of said plasma source, and the surface of the substrate is densified and smoothed by the plasma from the plasma source prior to depositing the Mo and Si layers; and each Mo layer and Si layer in a period is deposited to a specified thickness and the thickness of each deposited layer is controlled to ±0.1 nm or less to prevent spectral shift.