The SAF25/50 multifunctional R&D cluster plant (installed in a class 7-8 clean room) is well suited for research and development works as well as for feasibility studies and more general academic work in the field of thin film technologies. The plant is a multifunctional, expandable, modular and flexible system comprising an input/output chamber with ion gun, a central substrate transfer chamber with a radial telescopic transport arm, 7 deposition chambers and a glovebox. The plant is equipped with DC, pulsed-DC, RF, HIPIMS magnetron power supplies, e-beam gun, process control by Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES), high pressure quadrupole gas analyzers and in-situ film characterisation by ellipsometry. Installation of two HIPIMS sources and a two channel Time resolved OES system for process control is currently underway. Capitalizing on HIPIMS advantages, this will open new venues for the development of thin film deposition methods for coatings of more complex composition and/or layer structure than obtainable with a single deposition source.

    PLD will be installed and developed in the near future for production of thin films and heterostructures from various materials with complicated stoichiometry. PLD will allow a one-to-one transfer of elements from target to substrate, which is a strong advantage for the deposition of multiple element systems. Different atmospheres of deposition allow for varying of film properties in a wide range. One of the planned PLD applications is a sythesis of core-shell nanowire heterostructures, where core is a single crystal semiconducting material (e.g. ZnS, ZnO or GaN nanowire), and shell is layered VdW material belonging to TMDs materials group (e.g. MoS2, WS2, ReS2, etc.). Such heterostuctured materials are perspective for wide range of applications starting from sensors to photocatalitic water splitting.