Electrical and Optical Characteristics of High-Power Pulsed Sputtering Glow Discharge

Preparation of TiN films by reactive high-power pulsed sputtering Penning discharges

“…Recently, a high-power pulsed sputtering (HPPS) system with a configuration of two facing targets has been proposed and that system is called HPPS Penning discharge. [4][5][6][7][8][9] In the Penning discharge, the electric field is parallel to the magnetic field between the targets. Energetic ions of ambient gas accelerated by a relatively large sheath potential difference between the target and the plasma can bombard the target to produce the sputtered species.…”

Comparison of plasma characteristics of high-power pulsed sputtering glow discharge and hollow-cathode discharge

“…The delivered V-I characteristics of whole waveforms of the target voltage and the plasma current show a complicated shape because the waveforms consist of a stationary state (glow) phase and two transient phases: transient-glow and after-glow. 31,39) Thus, we extracted only the stationary state phase from the V-I waveforms at various applied voltages. 39) As shown in Fig.…”

“…41,43,44) The magnetic field traps electrons that are gyrated in the gap, and the electrons are simultaneously accelerated to the center of the gap. 31) The ambient gas is then ionized, and the gas ions are accelerated toward the targets without being significantly influenced by the magnetic field. At an argon gas pressure of 9.5 Pa and a magnetic field strength of 0.2 T, the cyclotron frequencies of the electrons, Ar ions and Ti ions are 5.6 GHz, 76 kHz and 64 kHz, respectively.…”

“…As a result, the charged particles (mainly electrons) are trapped by the Lorenz force, and the plasma is confined in the gap by the magnetic field compared to the HCD. 31) In addition, the ion source is compact in size and does not generate droplets because the glow discharge plasma is confined in the gap without arcing. 32) The ion source is pulsed to concentrate the current into bursts as short as 10-200 μs.…”

“…The HPPS discharge characteristics and applications for sputtering have been previously reported in various articles. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] However, most reports have mainly evaluated the HPPS discharge characteristics, and the comparison with the HCD plasma characteristics on the same conditions and structure have not been sufficiently reported. The HPPS discharge is characterized by parallel magnetic and electric fields at the gap, which is different from that of MS.…”