Jose, the answer to this question is independent of the type of physical deposition  process you utilize, whether it be e-beam evaporation, thermal evaporation, rf or dc sputtering, or even pulsed-laser deposition.  By not rotating your substrate, you will have much lower thickness uniformity.  Because of this, you will also experience a different set of stress variations across the film surface.  Since stress for thicker films is often relieved by either buckling or the formation of pinholes, you could run create a gradient of these features across a sample surface.  By using rotation, typically a larger uniform area for both thickness and stress-relieved artifacts will occur.

For various experimental reasons, you may or may not have the option of rotating the substrate holder.  Just make sure you know your area of uniform deposition and keep sample sizes small enough to remain within this limit.  You can still get work done, just in smaller regions.  Good luck.

Thank you Dr. Michael for your suggestions. Will do few surface characterization and quantify the same for our machine. :)

Michael provided a fantastic answer.

I am only familiar with Edwards 306 (auto & manual) vacuum coaters (thermal and e-beam), but in our systems the sample stage sits slightly off-centre in the chamber. Given that the evaporation sources (2 x thermal and 1 x e-beam) all have very different tooling factors (1.43 to 2.48) it caused serious issues when aiming for good thickness uniformity with either large numbers of small samples or with a single large wafer.

In order to overcome this issue we implemented a double-rotating stage, that is three smaller stages all rotate independently whilst attached to a larger rotating stage. This has proven to give fantastic results when mounting large numbers of samples. I would be happy to send images if you wished to replicate such a system.

Another suggestion would be to investigate whether you can increase the distance between the source and the samples (in the Edwards systems there is a slider system that allows for this adjustment), I would imagine that by increasing the distance between the source and sample you would get better uniformity.

As Michael mentions you will still be able to find a small area with acceptable results even when performing static evaporations, but characterisation will be the only way you can decide how large this area is for your application.

Dear Mr. Jules,

In our lab, we have an Israeli made evaporator system with 2 e-guns and one thermal source. We also have substrate holders with planetary motion (as you mentioned) to get good quality films. The machine gives satisfactory results while operating normally. We have added a static substrate holder to the machine whose height can be adjusted. I wanted thicker films by e-beam and I thought of using this stationary substrate holder. But the compromise I need to do is with the quality of film. 

Thanks for your comments :)

Yes, the parameters will be affected,if not drastically. Rotating generally gives better dispersion and lesser pin-holes. You need to tune it for your own. The surface and cross sectional morphology changes a lot. And adhesion depends on the substrate roughness and substrate temperature. 

For thicker films you need to increase your deposition rate which will greatly affect your crystanality and porosity. The OC will certainly fail when you reach higher than 4-5microns. 

One more point. Vacuum also play a major part in microstructure. It is advisable to produce atleast 10^-6 before depositing. 

Hope it helps.

Dear Jose, It is all about film thickness uniformity. You know, EB evaporation is used for large size multilayer devices fabrication, especially for optical application (HR mirrors, combiners, band pass filter) at large production level. EB evaporation generally suffers from an-isotropic distribution of flux of atoms. In such conditions, different part of substrate may get different flux of particles leading to a spatial non uniformity in film thickness. By rotating substrate, such things can be overcomed. In EB deposition, distribution of flux follows cos square distribution, i.e, flux in the center is maximum and decrease as we approach towards horizontal line (relative to crucible position). This means , for bigger substrate, there will be more thickness non uniformity. To overcome such non uniformity, substrate holders are designed non- planer. Domed shape is very common. Third thing, higher the distance between substrate and source, higher will be thickness uniformity. But higher distances lead to low rate of deposition. So we have to optimize the system as per requirements. Hope it will help you in some sense.