The main objective of the current paper is to describe the effect of external inductance (EI) on the current discharge waveforms of HiPIMS at different pulse-on time (P on) and its relation with static deposition rate and topographical properties of deposited titanium thin films, which is investigated by scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscope. It has shown that the higher the EI, independent of the P on , the higher the peak power is. The delay time also extensively increases when an EI is implemented into the circuit. However, the rise time does not have a linear dependency with the EI and its behavior changes to some extent at different P on. By increasing the EI from zero to 30 mH at P on = 60 μs, the peak power subsequently rises from 11 to 32 kW at constant time-average power. Meanwhile, the deposition rate decreases from 8.5 to 1.5 nm/min, which is mainly attributed to the metal ions return to the target surface and nonlinear dependency of sputtering yield with applied voltage. It was also revealed that the higher peak power has no special effect on the surface roughness of titanium thin films deposited by HiPIMS.
We study the hard and electrically conductive multicomponent diboride Ti0.25Zr0.25Hf0.25Ta0.25B2 with high thermal stability by ab initio calculations. We focus on the effect of defects (either vacancies or C atoms, both relevant for numerous experiments including our own) on material characteristics. Different types, concentrations and distributions of defects were investigated, and the configurations leading to the lowest formation energies were identified. We show that the replacement of B by C is more unfavorable than the formation of B vacancies. We show that vacancies prefer to coalesce into a larger planar void, minimizing the number of broken B B bonds and the volume per atom, while carbon substitutions at boron sites do not prefer coalescence and tend to minimize the number of C-C bonds. We show the effect of vacancies on mechanical and electronic properties, and use the results to explain experimental data.
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