High-Rate Reactive High-Power Impulse Magnetron Sputter Deposition: Principles and Applications
February 8, 2017 12:00 am
High-power impulse magnetron sputtering with a pulsed reactive gas flow control was used for high-rate reactive depositions of densified, highly optically transparent, stoichiometric ZrO2 and HfO2 films on floating substrates. The depositions were performed using a strongly unbalanced magnetron with a planar Zr and Hf target of 100 mm diameter in argon-oxygen gas mixtures at a total pressure close to 2 Pa. The repetition frequency was 500 Hz at the deposition-averaged target power density close to 30 Wcm-2 and 50 Wcm-2 with voltage pulse durations ranging from 50 μs to 200 μs (the duty cycles from 2.5 % to 10 %). The target-to-substrate distance was 100 mm. For the same duty cycle of 10 %, the deposition rates were up to 120 nm/min for the ZrO2 films and even up to 345 nm/min for the HfO2 films. An effective feedback pulsed reactive gas flow control and a simplified relation for the deposition rate of films prepared using a reactive high-power impulse magnetron sputtering are presented.