angstromATE

angstromATE is an R package for importing and simplifying log files generated by Angstrom Engineering thermal evaporator systems. These log files contain detailed time-series records of chamber pressure, source activity, deposition rate, film thickness, tooling parameters, substrate conditions, and other process variables. angstromATE extracts the most useful information from these files and returns it in a compact, analysis-ready format.

The package is designed for researchers, students, and laboratory users who want to quickly inspect deposition runs, compare process conditions, or archive key evaporation parameters without manually parsing raw instrument output files.

Typical use cases include:

• extracting condensed deposition-process summaries;
• comparing runs across different materials, sources, or recipes;
• preparing deposition metadata for lab notebooks, reports, or publications;
• integrating evaporator data into reproducible R-based analysis workflows;
• extracting information for methods section in M.S. Thesis.

Installation

You can install the released version of angstromATE from CRAN:

install.packages("angstromATE")

Usage

Use the ATE.import() function to load an Angstrom Engineering log file. The function reads the raw file and returns a condensed data frame containing the main deposition parameters.

library(angstromATE)
# sample file included with the package
fileName <- ATE.sampleFiles("csv")[1] 
df <- ATE.import(fileName)

head(df)

Recipe Files

In addition to log files, angstromATE can also read XML-based Angstrom Engineering recipe files using ATE.readRecipe().

recipe <- ATE.readRecipe(ATE.sampleFiles('rcp')[1])
recipe

This function extracts deposition-relevant recipe parameters such as source name, pre-vacuum pressure, substrate temperature, deposition rate, deposition time, and target thickness. The returned data frame contains one row per deposition action, making it easier to document and compare intended process conditions with measured log-file data.

Author

Thomas Gredig, Professor, California State University Long Beach