Deposition of Co-Cr films with excellent c-axis orientation and uniform thickness for rigid disks using compact sputtering apparatus

Abstract

Co-Cr films deposited at excessively low Ar pressure P/sub Ar/ often reveal critically poor c-axis orientation for the magnetron sputtering system. It has been found that high energy Ar atoms recoiled from the target plane would bombard heavily the growing films and degrade films' crystallographic texture. On the other hand, the facing targets sputtering (FTS) system could deposit the Co-Cr films with the excellent c-axis orientation even at P/sub Ar/ as low as 0.15 mTorr by optimizing the distance between targets D/sub t-t/. For example, the optimum value of D/sub t-t/ was 105 mm for the targets of 100/spl times/100 mm/sup 2/ in size. The optimum conditions in FTS system were described for deposition of the Co-Cr films with the fine microstructure and the excellent c-axis orientation preferable as perpendicular recording layers, and the compact FTS apparatus of 250/spl times/250/spl times/200 mm/sup 3/ in size was designed in this study.