I was using a 3 magnetron equipment, but now I am using an equipment that has both e-beam and sputtering in the same chamber. E-beam works perfectly but I am having troubles with the sputtering, I tried nickel and aluminum targets separately and they work (the plasma looks stable) but whenever I take out the substrates, they have absolutely no film in them!!!
I tried like 10 times now making variations in the gas flow (from 15 to 40) and watts(from 20 to 200), and it's not working... The target is getting wasted but the material is not going to my substrate.
Do you have any advise?
I am desperate!
Thanks!
There could be several reasons why a film is not being deposited on a substrate by DC Magnetron Sputtering. Here are a few possible explanations:
Hope you benefit ... best regards
raghd
Use 600 - 800 Watts (transmitted power) for the plasma inside the sputtering installation and a pressure of 10^(-1) - 10^(-2) Torr.
The power used for sputtering is 5W / cm^2 of the target and the distance target to substrate is 10 cm. The substrate should move to the left and to the right of the target when you have plasma inside the sputtering installation.
If the reflected power from the plasma to the magnetron is > 10 W use a variable capacitor (200 pF) and a variable coil to tune the plasma inside the installation
The thickness of the NI target should be very small. I normally use 0.2 mm or 0.1 mm thick nickel foil targets. If your magnetic material targets are thick, then they will not work.
Thank you for reading and for your answers.
I write to update you all about my problem. I totally solved it!!
The problem was that my substrate carrier was not grounded, I don´t know why but when it occurred to me to measure the conductivity, I found the problem. An electric alligator did it all.
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