Development and characterization of a secondary RF plasma-assisted closed-field dual magnetron sputtering system for optical coatings on large-area substrates

Abstract

An RF-assisted closed-field dual magnetron sputtering system was developed to characterize the plasma and the ionization fraction of sputtered material to provide a suitable system for depositing optical thin films on large-area substrates at low temperatures (<130 • C). The 'prototype' system consists of dual 76 mm dc magnetrons operated at both balanced and unbalanced (closed-field) configurations with an RF coil to initiate a secondary plasma. The RF plasma assistance enhanced the electron density to one order of magnitude higher, increased the deposition rate and effectively enhanced the ionization fraction of the sputtered flux to above 80% as measured from the quartz crystal microbalance combined with electrostatic filters. Based on the prototype system, a large-scale RF-assisted system using two 9 × 46 cm linear magnetron cathodes was also developed and evaluated. Both systems were also tested for reactive deposition of indium tin oxide on both small-scale and large-area polyethylene terephthalate substrates with the actual substrate surface temperature monitored to be <130 • C. From both the evaluation results of the plasma characterization and deposition performance, the prototype and the large linear magnetron system were found to be suitable for reactive thin film deposition of compound targets that can be extended to various types of optical coatings.

Flexible OLED fabrication with ITO thin film on polymer substrate

“…[19][20][21] In positive sense some groups have also reported characterization of the ITO films deposited on flexible substrates by magnetron sputtering. 22,23) Magnetron sputtering offers a flexible deposition method of thin films with high throughput. This process can be used for high-purity film fabrication in semiconductors and large-area coatings.…”

“…24) Interestingly, dual pulsed magnetron sputtering (DPMS) system is thought to be useful due to its low process temperature and capability of increasing more activated species in plasmas. 22,25,26) In spite of considerable research on ITO films and their detailed characterization [22][23][24][25][26] there is still the necessity of investigation on both characterizations of these films and their use for the device fabrication. This incompleteness motivates for this work.…”

Investigation and optimization of the magnetic field configuration in high-power impulse magnetron sputtering

“…An interest to further increase the ionization, initially driven by the need to deposit metal layers and diffusion barriers in high aspect ratio interconnects during integrated circuit (IC) fabrication, led to the development of ionized physical vapor deposition (iPVD) [2][3][4][5]8]. The methods to implement iPVD include supplementary plasma enhancement [7,9], hollow cathode magnetron [5,10], high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS), etc. HiPIMS was introduced by Kouznetsov et al [11] and has been extensively studied ever since [12][13][14].…”

“…Magnetron sputtering (MS) has been used in a variety of industrial applications such as hard coatings, low friction coatings and coatings with specific optical or electrical properties [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. A magnetron is designed to magnetically enhance and confine the plasma close to the cathode (the target).…”