The influence of pulse frequency and duty on the deposition rate in pulsed magnetron sputtering

Kelly, Peter, Onifade, Ayokola A., Zhou, Yanwen, Clarke, Gregory, Audronis, Martynas and Bradley, James (2007) The influence of pulse frequency and duty on the deposition rate in pulsed magnetron sputtering. Plasma processes and polymers, 4 (3). pp. 246-252. ISSN 1612-8869

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Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of pulse frequency and duty on the deposition rate during the pulsed magnetron sputtering process. Whilst deposition rates increased with duty, they also showed a very marked decrease with pulse frequency. Detailed analysis of the data implies that there is a dead time of the order of at least 500 ns at the beginning of each pulse-on cycle, during which negligible sputtering takes place. As pulse frequency increases, the dead time becomes a greater proportion of the total on-time, thus leading to a fall in the deposition rate. Other factors also contributing to this effect include a reduction in the average power delivered to the target as pulse frequency is increased, and significant differences with frequency in the rate of change of target voltage at the beginning of each pulse on cycle.