Photocatalytic, antifogging mirror

This article is about the coating of thin titanium dioxide film by sputter deposition. When irradiated with solar light, thin titanium dioxide film exhibits high oxidizing power and provides sterilizing, cleaning, decomposing, and hydrophylic effects. This technique has already been used for coating building walls by the sol-gel method and by others and has been partly commercialized to make automotive sideview mirrors. There have been no practical applications of the sputter deposition method so far, but establishment of the coating method is expected because of its excellent properties of film production techniques such as film thickness uniformity, film quality durability, and freedom from environmental pollution. In this article we discuss the establishment of the method of evaluating the quality of thin titanium dioxide film, establishment of sputter-deposition conditions, and the results of observation by x-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy of the thin film. It was found that titanium dioxide films, 200 nm or more in thickness, have the above mentioned performance and that sputter deposition allows the film to form without heating. (C) 2001 American Vacuum Society.