Dear all,
I made a simple lowcost sputter test setup. The purpose of this is to gain some knowledge and feeling of the methode and to know how to work with its parameters. My target is to deposite a shiny mirror metal layer on plastic objects. For now I do not use a magnetron sputter source. Instead of that, The setup is just made of a glass jar, base plate is target (cathode), ring magnet under target and a substrate in a metal clamp (anode) hanging 15mm above the target in the chamber. My plan is to procure professional material when I poses some the experience with the test setup.
So after several attempts, I succeed in sputtering a copper shiny mirror layer on plastic PET as substrates. The layers were also conductive. The plasma was quite stable. Altough, after a while it was not self sustained. So I increase the chamber pressure by adding Argon in the chamber to reignite the plasma and etc.. The working pressure is between 10E-2 and 10E-3 mbar.
After that I tried the same process for Aluminum. Unfortunately, while the sputter process, there was a lot of arcing between the anode and cathode. I adjusted the target substrate distance and cleaned the room with aceton. But still the arcing repeated in the next process. Also the arcing leads my turbo molecular pump to go in error.
So my question is, what could be the reason for such arcing between the anode and cathode for sputtering aluminum? Also the arcing does leave scars and some serious contamination on the target surface. A picture of the target surface is attached to this topic.
Looking forward to your feedback.
Kind regards,
Emre
What was the courrent and voltage in case of copper and aluminium ? If you have some electric arc the must be some high higher voltage ... Maybe you are trying to reach some current setpoint which is not possible and voltage which leads to too high voltage. Is it realy Aluminum ? It does not look like aluminum for me anymore. .. Mybe some oxid or nitride which is not conductive so the voltage increased too much. Check condutivity of this target.
Hello Roman Fiala ,
Well the plasma parameters for the copper was in range of +-300V and 0.380mA.
For the aluminum, the voltage was 270V. I increased the power high for faster sputter cycle, which was for copper 1,5 minutes.
The target is made of Al with 99,99% purity.
Thanks for your feedback.
Kind Regards,
Emre
Hello Emre Kurtoglu ,
now it is not easy to say without "seeing" it. If voltage is ok and target is ok. There can be problem with el-mag field. Is the thickness of copper and aluminum target the same? Maybe you need to use approriate spacer. Aluminum tagget can be too high.
Did you seen toroid of plasma in case of aluminum?
Roman
Dear Thomas Breuer
,We have answered in the same time. Now, I see your answer too. I meant that in this - also your meaning: " DC sputtering shows arcing issues for non-conductive target surface. " Non conductive target in DC mode -> arcs. Which means that power source increase voltage to the maximum in order to get some current. It seems that we both have doubts that the target is still clean pure Al.
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