AVS 45th International Symposium
    Thin Films Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session TF-WeA

Paper TF-WeA8
A Novel Approach to Collimated Physical Vapor Deposition

Wednesday, November 4, 1998, 4:20 pm, Room 310

Session: Advances in Sputtering
Presenter: D. Heimanson, CVC
Authors: A.P. Paranjpe, CVC
D. Heimanson, CVC
J.C.S. Kools, CVC
P.V. Schwartz, CVC
K. Song, CVC
B. Bergner, CVC
S. McAllister, CVC
Correspondent: Click to Email
In some applications of Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), it is desirable to have the atoms arriving at the substrate at angles close to the normal (collimation). Applications of collimated PVD include filling of highaspect ratio vias, as used in multilevel IC metallization, or high resolution shadow masking as used in lift-off technology. Several approaches to collimation have been proposed in recent years: natural (or long throw) collimation, physical collimation, ion beam deposition ionized PVD and hollow cathode collimation. In this contribution, we introduce a novel approach to collimation. It is found experimentally that this approach leads to a strongly improved degree of collimation when compared to the conventional collimation methods. Contrary to ion beam deposition and ionized PVD, our approach allows to vary the kinetic energy of the sputtered atoms arriving at the substrate over a wide range. Simulations of the target-to-substrate atom transport using the Simbad package show that the improved collimation method leads to angular distributions with Full Widths at Half Maximum (FWHM) below 20 degrees.