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Mastering

 

The way to the stamper
 
   
  The manufacturing process starts with a digitalized data record provided by the customer.  This is transferred to an electronic data image in our mastering system.  The physical production process begins with an glass mastering plate.
   
 
   
  These glass mastering plates are covered with a photo-sensitive coating with a thickness of approximately 150 nanometers.  This thickness more or less corresponds to the depth of the “pits” or holes on the subsequent CDs/DVDs that will drop out of the flat media surface.
   
 
   
 

The master is heated to dry the coating and, after cooling, is then delivered to the Laser Beam Recorder(LBR) where a laser "burns" or exposes the information into the coating on a track running from the inside to the outside of the master. In this process the data is encoded through different exposure times and pauses between the exposure sequences.

After the LBR process the is loaded the glass master into the developer where the exposed areas of the photosensitive coating are rinsed out of the surface of the master.
   
 
   
  In the next step, after rinsing and drying of the surface, a few nanometers thick nickel coating is sputtered onto the information structure.

This layer is thickened in the subsequent electroforming process. To do this, electrolytic nickel is deposited on the sputtered surface in a nickel sulphamate bath until a thickness of 0.3 mm is reached.

When the nickel disc (the so-called “father”) has been separated from the glass master, it goes through various cleaning stages to remove residual photosensitive coating and electrolyte.  The father could now be used as a molding tool to manufacture a disc – it is the right generation (a negative image of the finished disc) to do so.  For commercial production, it is normal to go through two more steps to get the final tool – the “mother” and “stamper” processes.
   
 
   
 

Up to ten negative copies can now be manufactured from the father, also by nickel plating.  These are the so-called “mothers”. The mother is used as a template for up to ten electroformed children (or stampers) that have exactly the same structure as the father. These stampers are the final stage of the mastering process.  The reverse side is machined (“sanded”) flat, the center hole is punched out with a high degree of precision and the final outer diameter is created. The stampers created in this manner are mounted in the injection molding dies of the production (“molding” or “replication”) machines.

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