The company which develops and manufactures automotive headlamps deals with coating of thin layers on a daily basis. Manufacturing headlights without this technology is hard to imagine. Coating is used in the second stage of manufacturing headlamps called vaporization or metallization which is a process where a metallic layer is deposited on a workpiece by vapor deposition or sputtering with the aim to reach an appropriate light reflectivity of the headlamp. When applying thin layers onto the workpiece, the problem of deficient adhesion can occur. This comes from poor plasma activation process or bad preparation of the workpiece surface before applying thin layers.
For ease of understanding of the thin layer deposition in the headlamps manufacturing process, the introduction describes different processes of thin layer deposition, with detail description of vapor deposition and sputtering. Since plasma is the basis of this process its main role is also described. In the central part of the diploma I focused on the manufacturing process of headlamps, with emphasis on the most commonly performed vapor deposition process used by the company where I work. This part also explains that when applying thin layers on workpieces different requirements, standards and quality measurements must be met, or errors may occur. In the conclusion I focused on the problem of low coating quality. With experimentation, I tried to optimize parameters of plasma activation process, which is crucial for the good coating quality of thin layers on the workpieces.
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