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 ex hibits 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 com mercialized to make automotive sideview mirrors. There have been no practic al applications of the sputter deposition method so far, but establishment of the coating method is expected because of its excellent properties of fi lm production techniques such as film thickness uniformity, film quality du rability, and freedom from environmental pollution. In this article we disc uss the establishment of the method of evaluating the quality of thin titan ium dioxide film, establishment of sputter-deposition conditions, and the r esults of observation by x-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy of t he thin film. It was found that titanium dioxide films, 200 nm or more in t hickness, have the above mentioned performance and that sputter deposition allows the film to form without heating. (C) 2001 American Vacuum Society.