Discharge voltage measurements during magnetron sputtering

Depla, Diederik; Buyle, Guy; Haemers, Johan; Gryse, Roger De

doi:10.1016/j.surfcoat.2005.02.166

Cited by 108 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The behavior of the I-V characteristics as a function of the operating pressure is not fully understood. At low magnetic field strengths, the value of n increases with increasing pressure, but the reverse behavior is apparent at high magnetic field strengths [32] as shown in figure 13. The origin of this steep behavior is a current topic of discussion and research as it is related to the diffusion of electrons perpendicular to magnetic field lines.…”

Section: I-v Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 89%

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Sputter Deposition Processes

Depla

Mahieu

Greene

2010

Handbook of Deposition Technologies for Films and Coatings

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123

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Sputter deposition is a widely used technique to deposit thin films on substrates. The technique is based upon ion bombardment of a source material, the target. Ion bombardment results in a vapor due to a purely physical process, i.e. the sputtering of the target material. Hence, this technique is part of the class of physical vapor deposition techniques, which includes, for example, thermal evaporation and pulsed laser deposition. The most common approach for growing thin films by sputter deposition is the use of a magnetron source in which positive ions present in the plasma of a magnetically enhanced glow discharge bombard the target. This popular technique forms the focus of this chapter. The target can be powered in different ways, ranging from dc for conductive targets, to rf for nonconductive targets, to a variety of different ways of applying current and/or voltage pulses to the target. Since sputtering is a purely physical process, adding chemistry to, for example, deposit a compound layer must be done ad hoc through the addition of a reactive gas to the plasma, i.e. reactive sputtering. The undesirable reaction of the reactive gas with the target material results in a non-linear behavior of the deposition parameters as a function of the reactive gas flow. To model this behavior, the fluxes of the various species towards the target must be determined. However, equally important are the fluxes of species incident at the substrate because they not only influence the reactive sputter deposition process, but also control the growth of the desired film. Indeed, the microstructure of magnetron sputter deposited films is defined by the identity of the particles arriving at the substrate, their fluxes and the energy per particle.

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Section: I-v Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The behavior of the discharge voltage as a function of experimental parameters has been investigated in detail [32]. Another important parameter is the discharge current, as it is combined with the discharge voltage to provide power delivered to the target.…”

Section: I-v Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sputter Deposition Processes

Depla

Mahieu

Greene

2010

Handbook of Deposition Technologies for Films and Coatings

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123

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“…A next generation of the small-scaled, rotating cylindrical magnetron as originally described in previous work [16] has been used. The most important change to the setup was the use of a different magnet system, which produces a higher maximal, radial magnetic field strength of 1000 G. The magnet configuration can be rotated to any fixed position within the target, which enables angularresolved measurements (see figure 1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Angular-resolved energy flux measurements of a dc- and HIPIMS-powered rotating cylindrical magnetron in reactive and non-reactive atmosphere

Leroy¹,

Konstantinidis²,

Mahieu³

et al. 2011

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

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To cite this version:W P Leroy, S Konstantinidis, S Mahieu, R Snyders, D Depla. Angular-resolved energy flux measurements of a dc-and HIPIMS-powered rotating cylindrical magnetron in reactive and non-reactive atmosphere. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, IOP Publishing, 2011, 44 (11) A rotating cylindrical magnetron equipped with a titanium target, was sputtered in DC and in HIPIMS mode, both in metallic and in oxide regime. For all sputter modes, the same process conditions and the same average sputtering power of 300W were used. An angular-resolved study was performed, 90 degrees around the rotating cylindrical magnetron, which obtained the total energy flux arriving at the substrate. Furthermore, the energy flux per adparticle was calculated by measuring the deposition rate for all sputter modes and regimes. There is only a small difference in total arriving energy flux between the DC-mode and the HIPIMS mode. A maximum arriving energy flux of ca. 0.26 mW/cm 2 was measured, when normalized to the sputtering power. Concerning the deposition rate, up to a 75% decrease was found from DC to HIPIMS mode. Furthermore, the emission and the transport of the particles have a similar angular profile for all sputter modes. Among the HIPIMS modes, a decrease in deposition rate was measured with increasing pulse length. Therefore, the energy which arrives per adparticle is the highest for the HIPIMS modes. A difference in the angular shape of the energy per arriving adparticle is noticed between the DC and the HIPIMS modes. The DC mode has a maximum arriving energy per adparticle around 50 degrees, while this is at 60 degrees for the HIPIMS mode.

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“…With the change of Y T-S distance to higher values, there is a reduction of the flux of metal particles because of the small solid angle and the increase of the gas scattering. The effect of the pressure is mainly due to the lowering of the discharge voltage at higher pressures [23][24][25][26], reducing the sputter yield of the target material.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%