Thin Film and Plasma

If you are depositing dielctric layers using RF and DC (or AC) power simultaneously, you run the great risk of damaging your DC supply and/or creating interference problems. A well designed and constructed "Blocking Filter" will prevent these issues from occurring.

Here is an example:

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The filter enables the low-frequency DC to pass to your sputter source while blocking the high-frequency RF from migrating back into the DC portion of your power delivery set-up.

IES Technical Sales is a high technology manufacturers representative and distribution firm serving the northeast U.S., specializing in vacuum & thin film, flow & pressure, thermal and related metrology applications.

There are two common ways to deal with process exhaust effluent: heating the forelines and components to maintain the effluent in a gaseous state until it enters the scrubber, or trapping the effluent in a place where you can access it easily for regular maintenance. Many installations have both, and we recommend this approach for the really harsh effluent applications such as LPCVD Silicon Nitride. For more information on the heating approach, there are other blog posts on this site. This post focuses on trapping techniques.

Standard and custom foreline traps range in complexity from sealed, coaxial traps (to prevent oil backstreaming), to triple-pass water cooled traps (for removing condensable gases which contaminate mechanical pump oil or other components of the system). There can be as much as a 200% increase in maintenance

This is an excerpt from an article posted by Advanced Energy on February 11, 2014: "Innovating Cathodic Arc Deposition: High-Performance Bias"

In the European Union, road transport is the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, right after power generation. It contributes about one-fifth of the EU's total emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) (http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars/faq_en.htm). Under EU regulations, average CO2 emissions from cars should not exceed 130 g CO2 per kilometer by 2015, and should drop further to 95 g/km by 2020. So, car manufacturers need to find ways to decrease friction in order to save gas, as gas conservation is an effective way to reduce CO2 emissions. This could be realized several ways, one of which is using hard-coating tools to create layer stacks for increasing wear resistance and decreasing friction.

For this application, there are several ways to create plasma inside the tool, but the majority of them use

This is a re-post of an article authored by Doug Pelleymounter, Senior Applications Engineer for Advanced Energy, dates March 11, 2014

"I get this question a lot: “How do I know when to use DC and when to use RF for a sputtering application?”

Of course, the first thing to consider is film requirements. Typically, RF makes a better thin film than DC, pulsed DC, or AC. The RF-sputtered film will be smoother and have better packing density. [ But ...] RF also deposits the film at about 20% of the DC rate.

If you want to sputter using DC, pulsed DC, or AC, you must have a conductive (or semi-conductive) target. I always check the conductivity of a target by placing my ohm meter probes anywhere on the target surface. I need to see less than 650 kΩ.

We used to only have analog ohm meters with a needle. A “wiggle” on the meter confirmed that we could use DC, pulsed DC, or AC. Now that we have digital meters, it’s necessary to put a value on the “wiggle.” On the digital

This is a re-post of an article by Dave Christie of Advanced Energy, posted Sep. 2, 2014:

In the magnetron sputtering process, the desired glow discharge mode is sustained by secondary emission of electrons induced by ion impact at the target surface—as an individual process. “An individual process” means that one ion incident on the surface results in emission of some number of secondary electrons (the ion impact being primary) with some probability. These secondary electrons perform bulk ionization of process gas neutrals by electron impact [1] and possibly sequential secondary processes such as Penning ionization and multiple body collisions. The undesired cathodic arc discharge mode is sustained by explosive emission of ions and electrons from small craters on the target surface in what could be considered a collective process [2]. It is a collective process because the current flowing in the arc provides heat to the arc spot, which, in turn, causes melting and explosive emission

This is a re-post of an article posted on June 11, 2014 by Dave Christie of Advanced Energy.

Magnetron sputtering systems are used to deposit complex layer systems on solid substrates and flexible webs for various uses, including display, flexible electronics, packaging, lighting, decorative, architectural, and automotive applications. Some of the layers are compounds, which may be dielectrics or transparent conductive oxides (TCOs). These layers may be deposited by reactive sputtering. Dual magnetron sputtering (DMS) has been widely used for reactive deposition in inline and roll-to-roll coaters. In DMS, the magnetrons alternate roles as cathode and anode, depending on the polarity of the power supply output. DMS eliminates the need for explicit, separate anodes. This is one of its main advantages, since explicit anodes require regular maintenance and are a source of unwanted particle generation. In dielectric deposition processes, explicit anodes can stop working when they become

This is a re-post of an article authored by Dave Christie of Advanced Energy Industries, first posted on November 11, 2014.

High power industrial processes present some unique challenges to equipment designers, facility designers, and power electronics engineers. Large machines may have dimensions of tens, or even hundreds, of meters. They are typically situated in buildings with large highbays and bridge cranes overhead. Access to forklifts and other vehicles is provided in “keep clear” zones around the perimeter of the machine. An outcome that can be surprising is the location of the power supplies for the plasma processes. They can be located across the “keep clear” zones, with cable lengths of 30 m or more. This cable length, with typical inductance for realistic cables, provides a challenge

This is a re-post of an article authored by Dave Christie of Advanced Energy and first posted on December 3, 2014.

In the last post, I wrote about the importance of the waveform in delivering high average power from pulsed power supplies to industrial Dual Magnetron Sputtering (DMS) systems. Low inductance output cabling is preferred to fully access the performance potential of these pulsed power supplies. Preferred cable styles include tri-axial, twisted pair, and other low inductance designs. However, there is one in particular that has been effective in the field. It is a four conductor cable, with two opposing conductors connected to one magnetron, and the other two conductors connected to the other magnetron. A cross section of this configuration is shown in the figure below. Litz wire is the best conductor choice for high currents. An alternative is to use a number of coaxial cables in parallel. This approach is scalable to very high currents and very low inductances and