Fundamentals of Vacuum Technology What is Vacuum?

Anything below an atsmosphere is vacuum.

Why?
1. To prevent air from contamination of clean surface 2. To prevent interference with a chemical reaction. 3. Beams of atomic particle must be handle in vacuum to prevent the loss of momentum through collisions with air molecules. 4. Many forms of radiation are absorbed by the air and thus can propagate over large distance only in vacuum. 5. Important in Mass Spectrometry and electron microscope

HOW? Nature of Gases:

Pressure below one atmosphere is divided into following categories: (1 Atm = 1 bar = 1000 mbar = 760 Torr, Number Density = 2.7 X 1019 cm-3) Low vacuum = Atmospheric Pressure to 1mbar Medium vac = 1mbar 10-3 mbar High vacuum = 10-3 mbar 10-8 mbar Ultra High vacuum = 10-8 mbar 10-12 mbar Extreme High Vacuum = Less than 10-12 mbar When the system is evacuated the gas system is modified because the sffieciency of vacuum pump is different for different gases. At low pressures the molecules desorbed from the wall of the chamber and make up the residual gases. Initially the bulk gas leaving the wall is H2O, CO2 and at very low pressures in a backed container it is mainly H2.

Gas Kinetic Theory:

What happens to the molecule at the lower pressures? The avg velocity of a molecule can be deduced from Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution law:

For an air molecule at 20 degree centigrade, mean velocity comes out to be km/sec .

Mean free path:

Since the molecules suffer collisions with each other, there is a distance which each molecule travels between collisions. We would expect this mean free path to be a function of the density, the mean velocity and the size of the molecules themselves. We can imagine the molecule to be a sphere with a diameter d. If we consider all molecules except one to be fixed, we see that the molecule travels a distance vt in time t. If its center moves within d of any other molecule, the two will collide, so the molecule sweeps out a free volume d2vt. If we have a molecular density n, the space for any given molecule is 1/n so this is the free volume a molecule should on average sweep out before colliding. This yields the result,

Where = mean free time between collisions and the mean free path is = = =

We have ignored the motion of the other molecules here in this process. Their motion complicates the calculation, but if we apply the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution, we obtain a factor of .

Mean free path is inversely proportional to the pressure. For N2 or O2 d = 3*10 -8 cm. The number density at 1mtorr is around 3.5*1013cm-3. Thus the mean free path in air at 1mtorr is about 5cm. A valuable rule of thumb is that for air at room temperature 20 . = cm.

Fundamentally many interesting applications of vacuum technology depend on the mean free path being much larger than other dimensions in the system. For example, evaporative deposition of metal films onto substrates is efficient only when the mean free ath is significantly larger than the distance between the evaporator element and the substrate often a distance on the order of 10 centimeters. The Knudsen number is a dimensionless number which captures this concept: K=/d K << 1, the gas molecule will suffer many collisions in transport between two walls of the container k/a viscous regime.

K>> 1, the collision between gas molecules is neglected k/a molecular regime.

Surface collisions or Interactions:

An infinite volume filled with gas is not very interesting, and in any case it would take very long time to pump down! In a real vacuum system, there are many solid surfaces: chamber walls, vacuum pump parts, and research samples for example. These surfaces can interact with the volume of the system in several ways which include adsorption, absorption, and evaporation. The gas molecules within a vacuum chamber will frequently impact on the surfaces. When a gas molecule impacts a surface it may reflect off the surface elastically, but often it will briefly adhere to the surface because of van der Waals forces and then escape again. In these cases, the escaping gas molecule may go in any direction and will have a thermal energy characteristic of the temperature of the surface. Gas molecules may remain on the surface for a long period of time, in which case they are considered to be adsorbed on the surface. The gradual release of adsorbed gas (outgassing) is a major issue in high vacuum systems, but the application of high temperatures (> 400_ C) to the chamber will greatly increase the desorption rate. Therefore, high vacuum systems are generally baked-out at high temperature and moderate vacuum for several days before first use. Absorption is the diffusion of gas molecules into a solid material. Once a surface is clean from adsorbed gas, the diffusion of the absorbed gas back to the surface becomes the major inflow. The rate of diffusion can also be increased by high temperatures, and the baking-out process aids in the removal of much absorbed gas as well. Fundamentally, a perfectly sealed vacuum system is limited in pressure by the diffusion of gas from the outside surface to the inside surface a process called permeation. This process is extremely slow for most gasses except hydrogen, but even hydrogen is rarely a limiting factor until pressures of 109 Pa are reached .A more important source of gas in the system can be the surface materials themselves if they have vapor pressures which are comparable to the pressures in the vacuum system. For this reason, only certain types of materials should be used for vacuum system elements. The most commonly-used materials are stainless steel, aluminum, and glass. The frequency of collisions of gas molecules with a surface is: (s-1cm-2) The sticking probability for most air molecules on a clean surface at room temperature is between 0.1 and 1.0. For water the sticking probability is about unity for most surfaces. Assuming unit sticking probability and a molecular diameter d = 3 X 10-8 cm, the time required to form a monolayer of adsorbed air molecules air at 20 , is

Thus to maintain a clean surface for a useful period of time may require a gas pressure over the surface less than 10-9 torr.

Gas Flow:
A simple vacuum system is shown in Figure 1. A working chamber V is connected by way of a pipe with diameter d to a pump. In designing a system, it is important to know how the various pipe and pump parameters will affect the behavior of the system. In particular, it is useful to understand the flow of gas through the system and how quickly the system should reach a specified pressure.

Fig1: Simple vacuum system with a working chamber connected by a long pipe to a single pump. Flow in a vacuum system can be modeled in a very similar way to electrical circuits, subject to some care. Instead of resistance, the reciprocal concept (conductance, C) is used and the voltage difference is replaced by the pressure difference (p2-p1) . Ohms law thus becomes

Unit of conductance = L/s = m3/s Q = rate of flow

We can combine conductances in many cases to create a global conductance, although care must be taken that the elements being connected do not have internal structure which, taken together, would limit the flow more than when taken separately. Assuming we are considering simple pipes, a series of pipes will have a conductance

while parallel pipes connecting the same volumes will have a net conductance CT =C1+C2+C3+...

A turbomolecular pump is a type of vacuum pump, superficially similar to a turbopump, used to obtain and maintain high vacuum. These pumps work on the principle that gas molecules can be given momentum in a desired direction by repeated collision with a moving solid surface. In a turbomolecular pump, a rapidly spinning turbine rotor 'hits' gas molecules from the inlet of the pump towards the exhaust in order to create or maintain a vacuum.

Contents

1 Operating principles 2 Maximum pressure 3 Practical considerations 4 History 5 References 6 External links

Operating principles
Most turbomolecular pumps employ multiple stages consisting of rotor/stator pairs mounted in series. Gas captured by the upper stages is pushed into the lower stages and successively compressed to the level of the fore-vacuum (backing pump) pressure. As the gas molecules enter through the inlet, the rotor, which has a number of angled blades, hits the molecules. Thus the mechanical energy of the blades is transferred to the gas molecules. With this newly acquired momentum, the gas molecules enter into the gas transfer holes in the stator. This leads them to the next stage where they again collide with the rotor surface, and this process is continued, finally leading them outwards through the exhaust. Because of the relative motion of rotor and stator, molecules preferably hit the lower side of the blades. Because the blade surface looks down, most of the scattered molecules will leave it downwards. The surface is rough, so no reflection will occur. A blade needs to be thick and stable for high pressure operation and as thin as possible and slightly bent for maximum compression. For high compression ratios the throat between adjacent rotor blades (as shown in the image) is pointing as much as possible in the forward direction. For high flow rates the blades are at 45 and reach close to the axis.

Schematic of a turbomolecular pump. Because the compression of each stage is ~10, each stage closer to the outlet is considerably smaller than the preceding inlet stages. This has two consequences. The geometric progression tells us that infinite stages could ideally fit into a finite axial length. The finite length in this case is the full height of the housing as the bearings, the motor, and controller and some of the coolers can be installed inside on the axis. Radially, to grasp as much of the thin gas at the entrance, the inlet-side rotors would ideally have a larger radius, and correspondingly higher centrifugal force; ideal blades would get exponentially thinner towards their tips and carbon fibers should reinforce the aluminium blades. However, because the average speed of a blade affects pumping so much this is done by increasing the root diameter rather than the tip diameter where practical. Turbomolecular pumps must operate at very high speeds, and the friction heat buildup imposes design limitations. Some turbomolecular pumps use magnetic bearings to reduce friction and oil contamination. Because the magnetic bearings and the temperature cycles allow for only a limited clearance between rotor and stator, the blades at the high pressure stages are somewhat degenerated into a single helical foil each. Laminar flow cannot be used for pumping, because laminar turbines stall when not used at the designed flow. The pump can be cooled down to improve the compression, but should not be so cold as to condense ice on the blades. When a turbopump is stopped, the oil from the backing vacuum may backstream through the turbopump and contaminate the chamber. One way to prevent this is to introduce a laminar flow of nitrogen through the pump. The transition from vacuum to nitrogen and from a running to a still turbopump has to be synchronized precisely to avoid mechanical stress to the pump and overpressure at the exhaust. A thin membrane and a valve at the exhaust should be added to protect the turbopump from excessive back pressure (e.g. after a power failure or leaks in the backing vacuum). The rotor is stabilized in all of its six degrees of freedom. One degree is governed by the electric motor. Minimally, this degree must be stabilized electronically (or by a diamagnetic material, which is too unstable to be used in a precision pump bearing). Another way (ignoring losses in magnetic cores at high frequencies) is to construct this bearing as an axis with a sphere at each end. These spheres are inside hollow static spheres. On the surface of each sphere is a checkerboard pattern of inwards and outwards going magnetic field lines. As the checkerboard

pattern of the static spheres is rotated, the rotor rotates. In this construction no axis is made stable on the cost of making another axis unstable, but all axes are neutral and the electronic regulation is less stressed and will be more dynamically stable. Hall effect sensors can be used to sense the rotational position and the other degrees of freedom can be measured capacitively.

Maximum pressure

A turbomolecular pump made by Edwards[1] with attached vacuum ionization gauge for pressure measurement. At atmospheric pressure the mean free path of air is about 70 nm. Turbomolecular blades cannot be built with anything close to such a small clearance, so this type of pump stalls if exhausted directly to the atmosphere. Nonetheless Varian, Inc. since 2006 offers a pump where the last stages have blades optimized for zero flow and can pump against a pressure of one atmosphere. Because the low pressure stages are limiting the flow, the high pressure stages can be fixed to zero flow. Theoretically centrifugal pumps could be used, but it is more compact to use a circulating flow between hollow threads in the rotor and the stator. In other cases the exhaust is connected to a backing pump, which produces a pressure low enough for the turbomolecular pump to work efficiently. Typically, this pressure must be below 10 Pa with 1-2 Pa as common averages. The turbomolecular pump can be a very versatile pump. It can generate many degrees of vacuum from intermediate vacuum (~102 Pa) up to ultra-high vacuum levels (~108 Pa). Multiple turbomolecular pumps in a lab or manufacturing-plant can be connected by tubes to a small backing pump. Automatic valves and diffusion pump like injection into a large buffer-tube in front of the backing pump prevents any overpressure from one pump to stall another pump.

Practical considerations

A turbopump by Pfeiffer Vacuum[2] attached to a thin film deposition system for organic electronics research Laws of fluid dynamics do not apply in high vacuum environments. The maximum compression varies linearly with circumferential rotor speed. In order to obtain extremely low pressures down to 1 micropascal, rotation rates of 20,000 to 90,000 revolutions per minute are often necessary. Unfortunately, the compression ratio varies exponentially with the square root of the molecular weight of the gas. Thus, heavy molecules are pumped much more efficiently than light molecules. Most gases are heavy enough to be well pumped but it is difficult to pump hydrogen and helium efficiently. An additional drawback stems from the high rotor speed of this type of pump: very high grade bearings are required, which increase the cost. Because turbomolecular pumps only work in molecular flow conditions, a pure turbomolecular pump will require a very large backing pump to work effectively. Thus, many modern pumps have a molecular drag stage such as a Holweck or Gaede mechanism near the exhaust to reduce the size of backing pump required.

History
The turbomolecular pump was invented in 1958 by Becker, based on the older molecular drag pumps developed by Gaede in 1913, Holweck in 1923 and Siegbahn in 1944.[3]