Thin-Film Sensors for Aerospace

Vacuum Coating Equipment & Technologies

Aerospace sen­sor tech­nol­ogy is cen­tral to nav­i­ga­tion, flight con­trol, con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing, and mis­sion suc­cess. Sen­sors must op­er­ate re­li­ably un­der ex­treme con­di­tions — wide tem­per­a­ture ranges, se­vere vib­ra­tion, high ra­di­a­tion, and cor­ro­sive at­mos­pheres — so the right ma­te­ri­als and sur­face treat­ments are es­sen­tial.

Thin-­film sen­sors are es­pe­cial­ly suit­able be­cause they are light­weight, com­pact, and can be ap­plied di­rect­ly to com­po­nent sur­faces. By func­tion they can be broad­ly clas­si­fied as tem­per­a­ture sen­sors (in­clud­ing cryo­gen­ic con­di­tions), pres­sure sen­sors (pneu­mat­ics, hy­draul­ics, cab­in pres­sure), struc­tural sen­sors (struc­tural health mon­i­tor­ing, de­tec­tion of de­for­ma­tion, stress, and ma­te­ri­al fa­tigue), flow and me­di­um sen­sors, and gas and en­vi­ron­men­tal sen­sors.

Typ­i­cal ap­pli­ca­tions in­clude di­rect ap­pli­ca­tion to CFRP or me­tal air­frame struc­tures for real-­time struc­tural mon­i­tor­ing, high-­tem­per­a­ture-­sta­ble thin-­film ther­mo­cou­ples and pres­sure sen­sors in en­gines, spe­cial­ized sen­sors for cryo­gen­ic fuel tanks, and a wide range of avion­ics sen­sors. Key fea­tures in­clude strong mi­ni­atur­i­za­tion (typ­i­cal film thick­nesses 1–6 µm), high pre­ci­sion, and low weight for mass re­duc­tion.

Thin-­film sen­sors are fre­quent­ly cus­tom-­ad­apt­ed to spe­cif­ic ma­te­ri­als, load pro­files, and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions to max­i­mize re­li­abil­ity and per­for­mance. In­te­grat­ing PVD vac­uum coat­ings in­to the man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess im­proves sen­sor re­li­abil­ity and ser­vice life and en­ables func­tion­al sur­face prop­er­ties such as op­tic­al per­for­mance, elec­tri­cal con­duc­tiv­ity, and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­sis­tance.

We sup­ply vac­uum-­coat­ing sys­tems suit­ed to these aero­space re­quire­ments and pro­vide tech­no­log­i­cal sup­port for sam­pling, pi­lot tri­als, and scal­ing to pro­duc­tion.