Sputter heating in ionized metal physical vapor deposition

Summary form only given. In this paper, sputter heating and subsequent rarefaction in IMPVD reactors is investigated using a plasma equipment model. The Hybrid Plasma Equipment Model has been improved to include processes relevant to sputter heating. Specifically, the algorithms for yields and sputtered atom energies have been improved to account for the ion identity and energy as a function of position on the target. The transport and slowing of sputtered atoms is addressed using a Monte Carlo simulation. By collecting statistics on the energy and momenta of slowing sputtered atoms before and after a collision, rates of momentum transfer and random heating of the gas are computed. These quantities are then used in the momenta and energy equations for neutral and ion species. Parametric studies have been performed for sputter heating in aluminum and copper IMPVD systems operating at low to high powers (/spl les/1200 W ICP, /spl les/2500 W magnetron) in 10s mTorr Ar. When operating with ICP excitation only, gas temperatures of 800 K are typically obtained with powers of >1 kW. Additional temperature rises of 500-1500 K from sputter heating can be obtained, depending on the magnetron power and accommodation coefficient of the gas on the walls.