Preparation of targets by sputter deposition

For target preparation at GSI, a focused ion-beam sputter source, as described by Sletten and Knudsen, has been available for a long time. A survey of the sputtering yields of several isotopic materials was given by Folger et al. This method is applied mainly for rare refractive materials where only small target areas and medium uniformities are needed. We present the setup and discuss the methodʹs pros and cons. For some selected isotopic materials we describe the preparation and the achieved thickness. While for the target preparation of rare materials the focused ion-beam sputter deposition is the ideal choice for larger dimensions, for significantly thicker layers or non-sticking materials, we complemented our lab equipment with a magnetron sputtering machine. We show the principle of this method and report first results of target preparation with the apparatus.