Study of the Effect of RF-power and process pressure on the morphology of copper and titanium sputtered by ICIS

Inductively Coupled Impulse Sputtering is a promising new technique for highly ionised sputter deposition of materials. It combines pulsed RF-power ICP technology to generate plasma with pulsed high voltage DC bias on the cathode to eliminate the need for a magnetron.\ud To understand the effect of power and pressure on the coating morphology, Copper and Titanium films have been deposited in a power-pressure matrix. The RF-power was increased from 2000 - 4000 W. The pressure was set to 6 Pa and 13 Pa respectively.\ud For Copper, the morphology changes from columnar to fully dense with increasing power and the deposition rate drops from 360 nmh-1 to 210 nmh-1 with higher process pressure.\ud Titanium morphology does not change with power or pressure. The deposition rate is lower than predicted by the differences in sputtering yields at 68 nmh-1 for a pressure of 6 Pa.