Review of metal oxide films deposited by filtered cathodic vacuum arc technique

Cathodic vacuum arc is a deposition technique which exhibits unique properties, such as high ion energy, high ionization rate and multiple ion charge states, depending on the cathodic materials. The drawback lies in the presence of macroparticles in the plasma thus preventing this technique from being widely applied. However, in the past decade, much effort had been focused on the elimination of macroparticles and the most successful approach is the use of curved magnetic filters to effectively separate the plasma from the macroparticles. The filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) refers to the combined cathodic arc with the magnetic filters. This article reports on the fundamentals related to vacuum arc, and the basic concept behind the magnetic filters and its effectiveness in the removal of macroparticles. This promising technique has been further applied to the deposition of metal oxide thin films, which is an important group of materials. The properties of various metal oxide thin films, such as titanium oxide, aluminum oxide, zinc oxide, zirconium oxide, transparent conducting oxides and other oxides, deposited by the FCVA are reviewed in this article. In addition, some applications of the metal oxide thin films will be discussed.