Electrical, optical, and structural properties of indium-tin-oxide thin films deposited on polyethylene terephthalate substrates by rf sputtering

Conditions for ablation of materials and film deposition were analyzed for a pulsed (∼100 ns) electron beam produced by a channel-spark source. For dielectric materials, we found the existence of an optimal source voltage related to the saturation of the pulse current. Our analysis indicates a larger ablated mass, smaller optimal deposition rates (∼0.25 Å/pulse), and a larger optimal target to substrate distance relative to pulsed laser deposition process.

An adiabatic thermalization model is developed to describe a typical pulsed laser deposition (PLD) process. The interaction of atoms in the plume, ejected from the target, with those of the background gas (e.g., oxygen) is specifically considered. The model gives a physical definition of the “plume range,” which depends on the particular PLD system, and calculates the range values. One prediction is that when the target-to-substrate distance is optimized, the deposition rate exhibits an extremely weak dependence on pulse intensity and will always be about 1 Å per pulse.

No abstract

No abstract