This tutorial is intended for decision makers, engineers, technician and students interested in equipment availability, applications and process requirements of HIPIMS. Basic understanding or experience with plasma and materials is desirable but not required.

HIPIMS is a highly ionized pulsed sputtering process that produces significant ionization of the sputtered materials that, in turn, enables effective surface modification by ion etching and energetic deposition. Energetic deposition allows the formation of coatings with unique or superior properties compared to other deposition processes. Presently HIPIMS is undergoing the transition from academic research to being a major industrial process. 

The tutorial starts with a short introduction in the basics of HIPIMS technology. An extended treatment of HIPIMS is provided by the tutorial C-323 “High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering. The main focus of this tutorial is on commercially available equipment and its specifications as well as the general processing principles. Finally industrial (or close to industrial) applications will be presented.

Topical Outline:

1. Introduction to HIPIMS Technology

2. Industrial Equipment
   a. HIPIMS pulse generation
   b. Process control (reactive HIPIMS)
   c. HIPIMS diagnostics
   d. HIPIMS Coating systems

3. HIPIMS Applications
   a. HIPIMS etching
   b. Trench filling, Through via connection
   c. TCOs
   d. Hard coatings
     - nitrides
     - carbides
e. Optical coatings

 

This tutorial is intended for engineers, technicians, students, and others interested in using pulsed plasmas for deposition in general, and high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) in particular. Some basic understanding or experience with plasmas and materials is desirable but not required. The tutorial starts with an introduction to high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS). We will explain the idea behind HIPIMS and the potential for industrial applications, especially the chance to improve adhesion and coating properties, as well as to create new coatings, not possible with other techniques. This course will only cover be a brief introduction to HIPIMS (for extended information and physical background please refer to C 323). Equipped with these basics, we move on to the central topic of this tutorial, the commercially available components for pulse generation and process control, as well as plasma characterization. We will look at the basic principle of a HIPIMS power supply. The different commercially available power supplies will be presented with their corresponding key features. Especially for industrial size processes and reactive sputtering a suited process control is essential. Available systems for active feedback control for reactive HIPIMS will be presented. For the characterization several methods and systems are available. We will focus on the specifics of HIPIMS and on diagnostic tools taking the process characteristics into account. The section will be closed by an overview on HIPIMS machines actually offered by different plant manufacturers. The tutorial is concluded by considering different applications, already industrialized, or close to industrialization. The potential of the different processes used and the general pulse sequences reported in literature will be summarizes and presented. This final section will show the published state of the art of industrialization of HIPIMS technology and provide visions for future applications with new or superior coatings prepared by HIPIMS.

Instructor: Ralf Bandorf, Fraunhofer IST - Braunschweig, Germany

Instructor: Arutiun P. Ehiasarian, Sheffield Hallam University - United Kingdom