DISCHARGE CHARACTERISTICS OF Ti AND FILM PREPARATION USING HYBRID HIGH POWER IMPULSE MAGNETRON SPUTTERING

Abstract

Hybrid high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) is a new-generation HIPIMS technique with a pulse and dirrect current power supply parallelled connection operation. In this work, the influence of dirrect current from 0 to 4.0 A supplied by the dirrect current power is investigated on hybrid HIPIMS Ti discharge characteristics, plasma parameters (plasma potential, electron temperature and electron density) and Ti film properties in an Ar atmosphere. The results show that target voltage and current are characterized by a peak with variation of time in different dirrect currents. Although the target voltage is barely affected, the target current decreases with increasing the dirrect current during the pulse turn-on stage. The plasma parameters determined by a Langmuir probe have been significantly influenced by the dirrect current. Moreover, the deposition rate and average roughness increase while the hardness and elastic modulus have a slight decrease with the variation of dirrect current from 1.0 to 3.0 A. The samples are selected for comparison with that prepared by conventional direct current magnetron sputtering (DCMS) at the same average target power 650 and 1500 W. The results demonstrate that Ti films using hybrid HIPIMS have a close deposition rate and a superior quality and performance to those prepared using DCMS especially at the low target power 650 W when the direct current is 1.0 A.