A mass spectrometer study is made of the residual gases in several types of vacuum evaporators ranging from oil..cJiffusion-pumped, conventional systems to an oil.free, ultra.high.vacuum chamber. Partial pressures of water vapor, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen, argon and hydrocarbon vapors varied appreciably in the evaporators studied.The performance of a conventional system was improved by using special low-vapor-pressure gasket materials fa minimize hydrocarbon contamination, a liquid-nitrogen trap to reduce water vapor, titanium gettering for oxygen and nickel-iron gettering for hydrogen. For thin-film deposition, the importance of thoroughly outgassing the source matericds is pointed out.
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