Target material with large scale and high Si contents for electronics

摘要

Sputtering production of thin film resistors, such as metal and metal-oxide thin film resistors, have been widely used in industry since the development of the sputtering deposition technique, and a large amount of targets used for sputtering deposition are also consumed. Generally, the thin film resistors and targets should coincide with good electrical and mechanical properties, high stability and high reliability, as well as low cost. Some commercial target materials, such as Cu-Ni, Ni-Cr, Ni-Cr-Si, Fe-Cr-Al, Cr-Si, etc., for thin film resistors have been available; however, other special requirements of size and property of targets are required [e.g. large scale (380 mm * 127 mm * 13 mm), high resistivity (above 1 kΩ, or more than 10 kΩ) and low temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR, <50p.p.m. ℃~(-1)) with high stability and reliability. It is known that high Si content materials can be used as the target material for the demand of high resistivity. In the past, there were two conventional methods for target fabrication: the powder metallurgical and melt-metallurgical methods. Though the former is commonly used for brittle material and refractory material, we think it is better if we use the melt-metallurgical method. The melt-metallurgical method has the advantage of a less complicated fabrication process, relatively low cost and better control of the cast target for the sputtering deposition process. Obviously, a brittle target, due to large scale and high Si content is a big problem. A small size or less Si content target was once manufactured by melt-metallurgical method [1], As far as the authors know, there has been no report on both a large scale and high Si content target fabricated by the melt-metallurgical method.