Edison’s vacuum coating patents

Among the over one thousand patents bearing Thomas A. Edison’s name are several for vacuum coating processes including chemical vapor deposition, evaporation, and sputter deposition. Beginning in 1880 Edison applied for patents that described carbon deposition processes that would now be called pyrolytic chemical vapor deposition. In 1884 Edison applied for a patent (granted in 1894) that described coating by evaporation in a vacuum by direct resistance heating or arc heating using a continuous current. Edison called the process “electro vacuous deposition.” He prophetically wrote, “the uses of the invention are almost infinite.” Edison also employed sputter deposition and in 1900 applied for a patent on a “Process of Coating Phonograph Records.” Issued in 1902, the patent describes using a “silent or brush electrical discharge” produced by an induction coil. The National Phonograph Company, one of Edison’s many enterprises, used the sputtering process to deposit a thin layer of gold on wax phonograph cylinder masters that could then be electroplated to form molds to mass produce celluloid duplicates. The method was used for 20 years, from 1901 to 1921. It enabled the reproduction of cylinder grooves less than 0.001 in. deep at a density of 200 grooves per in. From 1913 to 1921, 10-in.-diameter Edison Diamond Disc phonograph records were made using the same method. Sputtering was abandoned in 1927, as it could not be scaled up to produce the 12 in. disks that were then introduced.