A unique ion beam based sputter coating system producing continuous, ultra thin, amorphous coatings free of thermal artifacts making them ideal for FESEM and TEM applications. This is an important advantage over traditional coating techniques such as thermal evaporation, magnetron or RF sputtering that produces coarse deposition structures.

Two Compact Ion Sources produce high sputtering rates. Coating times vary from about 10 seconds to 2 minutes depending on target material, ion beam energy and coating thickness.

A Whisperlok™ mechanism provides true "Fast Specimen Exchange"
(<1 minute) thus eliminating venting the complete chamber to atmosphere when loading and unloading samples. A second key feature is providing variable speed sample rotation along with simultaneous rocking to ensure uniform sample coating.
TEM Whisperlok™ Adapters (Optional) offers the ability to accept all makes of side-entry TEM or SEM sample holders. Samples may be coated at low temperatures using TEM cryoholders if required.

Multiple Targets: The target exchange mechanisms permits selection of one of two available target materials within seconds without breaking vacuum. Adding a second target exchange mechanism (Optional) allows the user two additional targets for a total of four target materials. Dormant targets within the chamber are fully shielded from sputter contamination.

The Gatan ion beam coater offers convenience, efficiency and dependability in a compact, bench-top instrument. It produces ultra-fine grained/amorphous and artifact free coatings for the more demanding high-resolution field-emission microscopes. Specimens are coated quickly with negligible specimen heating.