High Deposition Rate of Dual-cathode DC Unbalanced Magnetron Sputtering

Dual-cathode dc unbalanced magnetron sputtering for the deposition of ternary compound films with a high deposition rate was designed and constructed. It consists of two magnetrons of opposite magnetic polarities. Each magnetron consists of central and outer ring magnets with the residual inductions of 500 and 600 mT, respectively. The testing results of the system showed that high plasma volume could be created at a long substrate distance of about 15 cm from the targets. In addition, by using this sputtering system for coating TiAlN film, the result showed that at a target to substrate distance of 13 cm the film growth rate was 7.3 nm/min. It indicates that the sputtering system developed in this study is suitable for large substrate area coating due to the long distance of target to substrate.