INVAP has designed and built several custom-made Ultra High Vacuum Chambers for scientific use. The following description corresponds to a one of them designed and constructed for pulsed laser ablation deposition, its customer being North Carolina State University, USA.
Front and Upper view of Ultra High Vacuum Chamber.

This particular chamber helped North Carolina State researchers to grow high temperature ferroelectric thin films, and the result of their investigation was a breaktrough type film extensively employed in the first “smart cards”, commercial products based on ferroelectric memories.

The above said chamber is built in AISI 304 steel, 40-cm in diameter and 60-cm in height, with 15 Conflat-like flanges, some of them welded pointing to a common centre.

All the TIG welds were performed from the internal part of the chamber emphasizing the cleanliness of the surfaces during the whole process. The surfaces were finally electrochemically polished reaching a precision better than 0.05 microns.