Global strategies have been developed to reach net-zero-emissions within the next decades, requiring a substantial reduction of carbon footprint. The building and transport sector are both known to be responsible for consistent shares of CO2 emissions. As the portion of glazing is growing within both industries, glazing has become a key element to control comfortable environment within buildings and vehicles. Besides the usage of insulating glass units (IGUs), thin film based infrared reflecting coatings can help to control heat flux between outside and inside of a building or vehicle.
The state-of-the-art technology, PVD thin film coatings on glass has been established and optimized mainly during the last 3 decades. Physically, the reduction of emissivity of the IGU is obtained by applying a series of conducting and non-conducting inorganic layers on the glass. However, the continuous manufacturing of such highly complex layer stacks got progressively challenging in terms of maintaining the tight quality criteria. On the other hand, large area coating tools are itself consuming high amounts of electricity during operation and should be always operated at high yield.
To address this task, new digital solutions are available to raise resource efficiency in production to a significantly higher level. We show how software solutions can increase productivity based on savings of time, coating material and energy. Out-of-specification losses due to process drift are reduced or avoided, the energy efficiency of process working points is optimized, and complex changes of production tool states can be automated to reduce resource losses caused by empiric operations or human error. In summary, the new software solutions help minimizing the carbon footprint of the coating process while at same time enabling the higher yield and profit.