Sputtered titanium species dynamics in HiPIMS
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | High power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) is a very attractive physical vapor deposition technique, which has been of great interest over the last two decades. Continuous development of the HiPIMS-based sputtering discharges is tightly related to the more profound understanding of the undergoing physical processes, a crucial factor for the optimization of thin-film growth as well as for further development of sputtering technology in general. In our experiments, various optical diagnostic methods for in-situ characterization of HiPIMS discharges was combined. Special attention was dedicated to the visualization of the ground state titanium neutrals and ions in the discharge volume above the cathode. Their direct imaging is a straightforward way to obtain information about their number density. Two-dimensional time-resolved density mapping of the sputtered species in a HiPIMS plasma was performed utilizing laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique. Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) measurements were employed in parallel to LIF to follow the number density evolution of sputtered species. Both methods LIF and AAS were used to investigate the effects such as plasma on-time, plasma off-time, working gas pressure, pulse energy, or oxygen admixture on number density evolution of sputtered species. |
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