Thermal evaporation is one of the widely used techniques of physical vapor deposition (PVD). It is a type of thin film deposition technique, where a solid material is evaporated by heating. The vapor stream rises from the bottom source and reaches the substrates, depositing on its surface. The deposited films usually have a thickness in the range of angstroms to microns and are composed of a single material or layers of multiple materials.

The thermal evaporator Nano 36 from Kurt J-Lesker allows the coatings and deposition of multilayer thin films of metals with a control on the sub-nanometric scale. It is equipped with: i) a vacuum chamber able to load a single 8" wafer or multiple smaller substrates; ii) three evaporation sources for multilayer deposition; iii) a quartz crystal sensor, that in conjunction with a thin film controller (FTC-2000), ensures an automatic control of the film thickness. Furthermore the substrate and source shutter and the motorized rotation of the sample holder ensure a uniform deposition on the entire surface of the substrate. Thermal evaporation, in combination with photolithography and lift off processes, allows the fabrication of microelectrodes for the development of electrochemical biosensor.