| AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| MEMS and NEMS | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session MN+AM-WeM |
| Session: | Emerging Materials & Fabrication Technologies toward Scalable & Additive Nanomanufacturing I |
| Presenter: | Rob Belan, Kurt J. Lesker Company |
| Authors: | R. Belan, Kurt J. Lesker Company V. Heydemann, Advantech U.S. Inc S. Armstrong, Kurt J. Lesker Company T. Fisher, Advantech U.S. Inc B. Brocato, Advantech U.S. Inc |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
A novel, low pressure sputter source has been used in conjunction with a precision shadow mask to deposit crisp features on glass substrates. The low pressure sputter source (LPSS) exhibits high-rate omnidirectional deposition and can form crisp lined features that are typically 5 μm to 50 μm in size when combined with precision mask technology. These feature sizes are a factor of 5x smaller compared to traditional magnetron sputtering at typical sputtering pressures (~1 Pa). The LPSS operates at pressures lower than 0.1 Pa which increases the mean free path of the sputtered atoms and reduces the spread of the deposited pattern through a shadow mask that is often associated with magnetron sputtering at normal pressures.
The LPSS sputters at rates (up to 3 Å/s) with precise rate control in the range of 1 Å/s to 3 Å/s for target/substrate distances from 76 mm to 101 mm. The first generation LPSS utilized a 137 mm x 5.4 mm aluminum cathode. The second generation LPSS employed a 826 mm x 32.5 mm high purity (10 ppm) aluminum cathode demonstrating the scalability of this novel deposition source.
Patterned thin films with thicknesses between 300 Å to 2,000 Å were deposited using the first and second generation low pressure sputter sources. The impact of ambient pressure, power and source/substrate distance on the resulting thin film was investigated. The deposition runs were conducted under static conditions, with stationary source and substrate, as well as with a scanning source.
Patterned features were deposited on display-grade borosilicate glass substrates by placing custom manufactured nickel shadow masks with apertures in the 20 µm to 50 µm size range between the low pressure sputter source and the substrates. The shadow masks are manufactured by an electroforming process that allows precise control of the mask thickness. Typical shadow mask materials are nickel and invar (FeNi36). As well as studying the sputtering process parameters of the LPSS the quality of the deposited patterned features were investigated using a variety of mask thicknesses and aperture dimensions.
The low pressure operation of the LPSS source enables thin film deposition of precision nanostructured patterns via shadow masks and sputtering, an area traditionally kept to evaporation methods. Results and conclusions of this work will be presented for this emerging fabrication technology.