Pulsed-DC - New Perspectives for Reactive Sputtering

摘要

DC and Pulsed-DC magnetron sputtering are the most popular industrial sputtering techniques. They are used for tool coating, decorative coating, metallization and photovoltaic cell production to name only few. The great advantage of using Pulsed-DC power delivery is a dramatic reduction of arcing and thus an improvement in coating quality and a significant prolongation of the tool operating time since maintenance breaks for mechanical cleaning of parasitic coatings on system components are minimized. The development of new applications and new materials brings new requirements for sputtering tools, tool efficiency, system reliability and cost-effective technical solutions. One of the challenging sputtering processes is reactive sputtering, used in different applications: from decorative coating to deposition of Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCOs) used for photovoltaic (PV) and display applications. In this work, the deposition of the TCO Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is used to exemplify the advantages of modern Pulsed-DC solutions applied for improvement of production yield as well as a power delivery method which can be easily mixed with RF plasma to reach suitable electrical properties of ITO films.