AVS 54th International Symposium
    Advanced Surface Engineering Tuesday Sessions
       Session SE-TuP

Paper SE-TuP12
Power Supplies to Enable High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering

Tuesday, October 16, 2007, 6:00 pm, Room 4C

Session: Advanced Surface Engineering Poster Session
Presenter: D. Ochs, HÜTTINGER Elektronik GmbH, Freiburg, Germany
Authors: D. Ochs, HÜTTINGER Elektronik GmbH, Freiburg, Germany
R. Spencer, Alacritas Consultancy Ltd., Leicestershire, U.K.
Correspondent: Click to Email

High Power Impulse Sputtering (HIPIMS or HPPMS) receives more and more attention as a technique to produce very dense films. It relies on the creation of high density plasma in front of the sputtering source and by that way a large fraction of the sputtered atoms are ionized. These ionized atoms can be used for surface pretreatment and deposition as well. The interfaces and layers so produced show superior properties in many applications. Currently the most investigated and promising application is use for hard coatings as wear and corrosion protection. Popular layers are for example CrN and TiN. To enable the HIPIMS process a specially designed power supply for powering the magnetron cathode is needed. This power supply consists of 3 modules. The DC module contains a converter which charges a capacitor bank in the pulse module. A semiconductor switch is activated by the pulse control unit. The third module is an impedance matching circuit to shape the output current pulse in order to match the requirements of the cathode. Several power supply configurations have been realized in order to fulfill the different process needs. HIPIMS power supplies with a max. pulse power of up to 18MW, a voltage of 1kV to 3kV and a current of 1kA to 6kA will be presented with practical results from industrial coating applications.