Thin Film Synthesis Using Miniature Pulsed Metal Vapor Vacuum arc Plasma Guns
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THIN FILM SYNTHESIS USING MINIATURE PULSED METAL VAPOR VACUUM ARC PLASMA GUNS X. GODECHOT*, M. B. SALMERON, D. F. OGLETREE, J. E. GALVIN, R. A. MACGILL, M. R. DICKINSON, K. M. YU and I. G. BROWN
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 ABSTRACT
Metallic coatings can be fabricated using the intense plasma generated by the metal vapor vacuum arc. We have made and tested an embodiment of vacuum arc plasma source that operates in a pulsed mode, thereby acquiring precise control over the plasma flux and so also over the deposition rate, and that is in the form of a miniature plasma gun, thereby allowing
deposition of metallic thin films to be carried out in confined spaces and also allowing a number of such guns to be clustered together. The plasma is created at the cathode spots on the metallic cathode surface, and is highly ionized and of directed energy a few tens of electron volts. Adhesion of the film to the substrate is thus good. Virtually all of the solid metals of the Periodic Table can be used, including highly refractory metals like tantalum and tungsten. Films, including multilayer thin films, can be fabricated of thickness from Angstroms to microns. We have carried out preliminary experiments using several different versions of miniature, pulsed, metal vapor vacuum arc plasma guns to fabricate metallic thin films and multilayers. Here we describe the plasma guns and their operation in this application, and present examples of some of the thin film structures we have fabricated, including yttrium and platinum films of thicknesses from a few hundred Angstroms up to 1 micron and an yttrium-cobalt multilayer structure of layer thickness about 100 Angstroms. INTRODUCTION
The technology for the formation of thin films and compositionally modulated multilayer structures has made great advances, and an array of such techniques is available to the experimenter. These techniques include sputtering [1], electron beam evaporation [2], molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [3], ion beam deposition [4,5], and laser ablation deposition [6,7]. There is interest in techniques for the deposition of metallic thin films also, or of multilayer structures in which one or more of the components is a metal [8-10]. The metal vapor vacuum arc [11] is a kind of plasma discharge that takes place between metallic electrodes in a high vacuum environment and that is a prolific producer of dense metal plasma. Vacuum arc plasma sources are attractive devices for the deposition of metallic thin films [12,13]. These kinds of sources produce intense fluxes of highly ionized metal plasma which when condensed form highly adherent and dense thin films. The metal vapor vacuum arc plasma discharge has been used widely for deposition of various metal coatings in a vacuum environment and for the formation of TiN protective coatings [14,15], and industrial arc source deposition equipment is readily available on the market [16]. The vacuum arc is commonly also called a 'cathodic arc'. Cathodic arc facilities are large pieces
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