The project aims at establishing the plasma properties in the HIPIMS Discharge and investigating the effect on the microstructure of coatings. More areas that have been looked at are

• microelectronics
• rotatable magnetrons
• photovoltaics
• coatings for space satellite cryogenic coolers

Project leader: Dr A P Ehiasarian

Abstract - download the document to read more (PDF, 228.1KB)

High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HIPIMS) has been developed on rotating PVD magnetron sources for uniform deposition on 200mm single wafer tools for barrier and seed layer deposition in through silicon vias (TSV). The ionization degree has been analysed by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Processes and hardware have been developed for HIPIMS of Ti, Ta and Cu with reasonable deposition rates and a high transfer factor due to low target substrate distance, good uniformities and low stress for the application in deep silicon etched features with very high aspect ratio (AR). For Ti a bottom coverage of 20% in trenches with AR 10:1 and 7% in trenches with AR 30:1 have been achieved. Studies with AR 10:1 vias have shown that continuous layers of Ti and Cu could be deposited inside the feature.