Time and Energy-Resolved Investigation of the HiPIMS Discharge in Ar and Ar/N2 Atmospheres
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Citation | |
| Description | High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS), an increasingly promising physical vapor deposition technique, employs short voltage pulses with a low duty cycle to generate a substantial flow of ionized sputtered particles. Introducing a reactive gas into the HiPIMS process opens new possibilities for producing innovative materials with diverse properties and compositions. Nevertheless, employing HiPIMS in a reactive process becomes tricky due to the complex time-dependent interplay between discharge properties and reactive gas supply. Consequently, there is a pressing need for a better understanding of discharge behavior in reactive HiPIMS to gain reproducible control over the deposition process. We investigated the reactive sputtering process using mass spectroscopy. In this experiment, a titanium cathode served as the sputtering source, and we maintained a constant total pressure and supplied power. We studied two cases: one with a low current (60 A) and another with a high current (150 A). We employed a Speedflo Mini fast feedback control system to measure throughout the hysteresis curve. We chose four distinctive points in the metal, transition, and poisoned regime, where we measured the ion flux of the present species by mass spectrometry. We captured time-resolved and time-averaged ion energy distribution functions (IEDF) for Ar+, Ar2+, Ti+, Ti2+, N+ and N2+ under all investigated conditions. This study follows up on the optical measurements that were made previously. |
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