AVS 47th International Symposium
    Surface Engineering Tuesday Sessions
       Session SE-TuP

Paper SE-TuP14
Energy and Angular Distributions of Deposition Flux in Magnetron Sputtering Systems

Tuesday, October 3, 2000, 5:30 pm, Room Exhibit Hall C & D

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: R.I. Erickson, Macalester College
Authors: R.I. Erickson, Macalester College
J.R. Doyle, Macalester College
Correspondent: Click to Email
The substrate energy and angular distribution of atoms sputtered in a magnetron glow discharge in argon is studied using Monte Carlo simulations and deposition profiles in cavity substrates. The simulation uses the TRIM code for the nascent sputter atom energy and angular distribution. The gas phase collisions are modelled using Thomas-Fermi-Dirac potentials for the higher energies and Lennard-Jones potentials for near thermal energies. Comparison of experimental deposition profiles on cavity substrates with the predicted angular distribution of arriving flux yields good agreement. The simulation results predict that the average energy of arriving atoms exhibit a dependence Bexp(-apd) down to thermal energies where p is the pressure, d is the target-substrate distance, B is the average energy of the nascent sputter atoms, and a is a constant independent of p and d. The constant a can be considered the inverse of a characteristic pd value for thermalization, and is parameterized by the atomic number of the target atom yielding a universal relation for arbitrary targets sputtered in argon.