AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Advanced Surface Engineering Monday Sessions
       Session SE+PS-MoA

Paper SE+PS-MoA3
Influence of Plasma Conditions on the Properties of Hafnium and Titanium Films Deposited using HIPIMS

Monday, October 18, 2010, 2:40 pm, Room Cimmaron

Session: Pulsed Plasmas in Surface Engineering
Presenter: A.N. Reed, Air Force Research Laboratory
Authors: A.N. Reed, Air Force Research Laboratory
M.A. Lange, Air Force Research Laboratory/Universal Technology Corp.
J.G. Jones, Air Force Research Laboratory
C. Muratore, Air Force Research Laboratory
J.J. Gengler, Air Force Research Laboratory
A.A. Voevodin, Air Force Research Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
The orientation of a film can have a significant effect on its physical properties, for example the thermal conductivity of hexagonal materials. There has been a significant amount of work in the area of controlling the microstructure of films using deposition parameters. High power impulse magnetron sputtering, HIPIMS, is a PVD technique that produces a sputtered flux with a higher ion content than conventional DC magnetron sputtering. The ionization fraction of material upon the substrate permits some control of the film characteristics. In this study films were grown at pressures ranging from 5-30 mTorr, and pulse duration from 20-200μs. The resulting films exhibited pressure dependent deposition rates as well as changing crystalline structure based on pulse duration. Energy resolved mass spectrometry and optical emission spectroscopy allowed correlation of ion energy distributions to deposition rates. Material characterization techniques, such as XRD, XPS, and SEM, have been used to correlate film structure to processing conditions for hafnium, titanium, and their nitrides. Time-domain thermal reflectance was used to measure the films' thermal conductivities. Differences in these values were related to the film microstructure.