| AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Thin Film | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session TF1-TuA |
| Session: | Computational Modeling and Analysis of Thin Films |
| Presenter: | C. Walton, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
| Authors: | C. Walton, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory G. Gilmer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory M. McNenly, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory J. Verboncoeur, University of California S. Wilks, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory L. Zepeda-Ruiz, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory T.W. Barbee, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Lack of detailed process conditions knowledge remains a key challenge in magnetron sputtering, both for chamber design and for process development. Fundamental information such as the pressure and temperature distribution of the sputter gas, and the energies and arrival angles of the sputtered atoms and other energetic species is often missing, or is only estimated from general formulas. However, open-source or low-cost tools are available for modeling all the physics of the sputter process, which can give more accurate data from desktop computations than traditional empirical approaches.
To get a better understanding of magnetron sputtering, we have collected existing models for the 4 main physics steps: 1) dynamics of the plasma using Particle In Cell-Monte Carlo Collision (PIC-MCC), 2) impact of ions on the target using molecular dynamics (MD), 3) transport of sputtered atoms to the substrate using Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), and 4) growth of the film using hybrid Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) and MD methods. All the models have been tested against experimental measurements. The spatial distribution and electron temperature Te of the plasma have been reproduced within ~25% for a scaled model of an example magnetron system. The rarefaction of the neutral gas in front of a magnetron observed by Rossnagel and others has been reproduced, and it is associated with a local pressure increase of ~50% which may strongly influence film properties such as stress and film density. Results on energies and arrival angles of sputtered atoms and reflected gas neutrals are applied to the Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of film growth. Model results and applications to growth of Cu, Zr and Be films will be presented. Work underway on increasing computation speed with parallelization will also be discussed.