The paper presents a description of a pulsed power supply of a magnetron sputtering system with a power of 10 kW, which has a wide range of output parameters, such as the amplitude, the frequency, and duration of voltage pulses. High values of the pulse current (up to 100 A) and voltage (up to 1800 V) provide the ability to work at low duty cycle, which in turn allows to increase the value of the ion current on the substrate. It has been experimentally found, that changing the frequency and duration of the pulses can increase the ion current density to the substrate while maintaining the average discharge power.

The paper studies the influence of the power supply output inductance on the arc parameters, which form on the sputtered target surface during high-power impulse magnetron sputtering. The arc energy, lifetime and maximum current are measured by the up-to-date power source and the proposed arc simulation circuit at various output inductance values. The experimental data are compared with the simulation results. The paper presents a brief model description for the arc parameter calculations. According to the experimental data, the decrease in the output inductance leads to the increase in the peak current, arc lifetime and energy. It is shown that the energy recuperation stored in the output inductance allows reducing the arc energy. Also, self-locking of control transistor occurs at a lower value (∼1 µH) of the output inductance, leading to the reduction in the current amplitude and the additional decrease in the arc energy.