IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Plasma Science Tuesday Sessions
       Session PS-TuP

Paper PS-TuP16
Computer Modeling as a Tool to Design Non-Critical High Rate Deposition Conditions for the "Baffled Target" Reactive Sputtering Process

Tuesday, October 30, 2001, 5:30 pm, Room 134/135

Session: Plasma Deposition, Modeling, and Emerging Applications Poster Session
Presenter: T. Nyberg, Uppsala University, Sweden
Authors: T. Nyberg, Uppsala University, Sweden
F. Engelmark, Uppsala University, Sweden
J. Westlinder, Uppsala University, Sweden
S. Berg, Uppsala University, Sweden
Correspondent: Click to Email
Normally it is quite puzzling to operate the target in the high rate metallic mode during reactive sputter deposition. To decrease the target poisoning, several authors have suggested to enclose the target into a box having a front aperture allowing sputtered material to be deposited through the aperture onto the substrates in the main chamber. The purpose of this box is to separate the reactive gas in the chamber from the target thereby decreasing the target poisoning. Non of the previous investigators, however, have made a detailed analysis of the full potential of this novel process design. By basically applying "Bergs´ model" for the reactive sputtering process to the conditions valid for this process we successfully were able to predict details of the behavior of the process. Most surprisingly we found out that with this "baffled target" it may be possible to carry out a perfect oxide deposition for a gas supply level even below the supply levels defining the hysteresis region. We have never observed such a favorable behavior for any type of reactive sputtering process before. This behavior offers extremely non-critical processing control allowing non-poisoned target high rate perfect oxide deposition. All our experimental results nicely correlates with the behavior predicted by the computer simulations.