Mirror Evaporator Improvement at SBU and Initial Coating Results

This paper presents improvements and design alterations made to the Evaporator System located in Stony Brook University Room S103, as well as an analysis of the techniques that are used, for general operation and the specific application of creating a mirror for pfRICH. The process of evaporation can be used to deposit a thin film of material upon a substrate, this requires a comprehensive vacuum system and a combination of metals to sublimate or evaporate. To adequately create the mirror, a procedure in which aluminum pellets are evaporated and chromium is sublimated resulting in a reflective finish is undergone, multiple modifications would be made to the interior of the existing setup of the evaporator as well as the exterior equipment to facilitate this. The process was modeled in ROOT and MATLAB, to provide a hypothetical
deposition amount, and designs were created in Auto-desk Inventor, for ion-source frame set-ups. Throughout the process, numerous, multi-faceted, issues were to be addressed ranging from the required servicing of pumps to entirely new renderings of mounts and piping and leak testing. The processes of pumping down the system for vacuum, making changes to the water cooling, cryogenic pumping, and serialization of parts are documented within this work.