Smoother Substrate Deposition Designs and Process Emulations of DC Magnetron Sputters

To smooth the substrate depositions of DC magnetron sputter (MS), such that the supplementary electrical and mechanical adjustment efforts can be alleviated, a refinement scheme that can be applied directly to the existing DC MS will be introduced. By properly control the magnetic and electric fields inside the vacuum chamber, trajectories of those atoms that are sputtered from the target surface can be more spread out. In addition, with the resultant higher plasma density, chance of collisions among the sputtered atoms and those Ar ions in the plasma will also be increased, hence the resulting distributions of target atoms deposited on the substrate surface will certainly be even out. To further confirm such concepts, a rational emulating process that can exploring both the atom sputtering process from the target and those collisions at the chamber with different three-dimensional magnetic and electric field environments is also developed. Thus the associated performance investigations on the DC MS with different magnetron arrangements can then be conveniently explored.