Sputter crater formation in the case of microsecond pulsed glow discharge in a Grimm-type source. Comparison of direct current and radio frequency modes

Plasma profiling-time of flight mass spectrometry: considerations to exploit its analytical performance for materials characterization

“…Recently, Fernández et al 24 have also reported nearly no changes on the analytical sensitivity as a function of pulse width when analysing thin film tandem solar cells with PP-TOFMS. These results are also in agreement to previous work from Efimova et al 25 with PGD-OES, who observed that sensitivity hardly changed depending on the pulse width assayed. On the other hand, it is important to note that in our experiments an enhancement of the sensitivity for high mass isotopes (e.g.…”

Glow discharge optical emission spectrometry for quantitative depth profiling of CIGS thin-films

“…Variation of the duty cycle at constant pulse length does not lead to any change of the crater shape. 29 However, higher duty cycles mean more power applied to the sample surface, and hence, enhanced heat introduction. This heat can lead to sputter-induced surface roughening of the CIGS samples caused presumably by Cu agglomeration.…”

“…Pulses which are shorter than 50-150 ms cause convex crater shapes. 29 Furthermore, in the case of rf discharge the application of short pulses suppresses the sputtering substantially. At pulses of 10 or 20 ms nearly no sputtering occurs.…”

“…At pulses of 10 or 20 ms nearly no sputtering occurs. 25,29 Accordingly, pulses around 100 ms were used in the present study.…”

Emergence and consequences of lateral sample heterogeneity in glow discharge spectrometry

“…8 Flat-bottomed craters are generally presumed to indicate even sputtering across the surface of a sample. 9,10 However, finer observation commonly reveals a roughened surface on the crater bottom that can arise from microscopic heterogeneity within a sample. Disparity in the sputtered depth across the surface of a sample is a greater problem when macroscopic inclusions are present, which results in variation in the depths and sputtering rates between entire regions of a sample.…”