Full Face Erosion Planar Cathodes as a Low Cost “Cylindrical Rotatable” R&D Tool
November 23, 2015 12:00 am
The industrial field of magnetron sputtering has seen a rapid transition from large area planar to large area rotatable cathodes. However, most R&D labs have continued with equipment that would require a large investment in order to implement relevant rotatable cathode technology. In many cases the downsizing on cathode diameter, and cathode length, has large implications in the relevance of the research itself. In addition the R&D lab find it very difficult to justify the large target consumable bill associated with the rotatable cathode targets. In order to facilitate suitable and relevant research, which could be applied to rotatable technology, this paper will present the use of circular magnetron sources with rotating plasma, which can simulate some of the benefits of the rotatable cylindrical cathode technology (such as a clean target, and the ability to maintain clean anode in a dual cathode sputtering). The paper presents the development of one of these tools. The sputtering of ITO target has been chosen as a comparative example between the planar and cylindrical target technology.