Deposition of thin films by sputtering cold isostatically pressed powder targets: A case study

Abstract

Powders of copper and aluminium with a maximum grain size of 50 µm are mixed in different ratios. The mixtures are cold isostatically pressed into two‐inch circular targets which are mounted in a conventional magnetron set‐up and used to deposit both metallic Cu–Al as well as oxygen rich Cu–Al–O thin films. In both cases the thin film composition is analysed and related to the target composition. Crystallographic properties of the deposited films are presented as well. The influence of the target composition on the reactive behaviour is studied by hysteresis measurements. Furthermore, the effective sputter yields of elemental powder targets were measured. Depending on the material, the sputter yields of the powder target either increased or decreased compared to the sputter yields of solid targets. This can be qualitatively explained by an analysis of the target roughness. For the fast scanning of the compositional influence on material properties, the use of powder targets shows to be a suitable and valuable approach.

Structure formation and properties of sputter deposited Nbx-CoCrCuFeNi high entropy alloy thin films

“…More details on the production and the use of powder targets can be found in the work of Boydens et al [22,23]. Five different targets were made and their compositions are summarized in Table 1.…”

The influence of target surface morphology on the deposition flux during direct-current magnetron sputtering

“…As discussed in [16,17], the effective sputter yield Y ef f can be retrieved from this mass difference using the following equation:…”

Investigation into the optoelectrical properties of TiO2thin films, deposited by RF magnetron sputtering using powder target

“…The method used here consists of using raw powder, as opposed to the typical sputter growth, where a relatively expensive TiO 2 ‐sintered target was used. Indeed, this method shows to be a suitable and valuable approach because it is free of thermal shock and allows to provide a very simple target.…”

“…The method used here consists of using raw powder, as opposed to the typical sputter growth, where a relatively expensive TiO 2 -sintered target was used. Indeed, this method shows to be a suitable and valuable approach [12] because it is free of thermal shock and allows to provide a very simple target. In this work, sputtering with a TiO 2 raw powder target without any further process such as sintering was used to deposit TiO 2 thin films with rutile phase on glass substrates at room temperature.…”