Investigation on functional thin film growth by reactive sputtering using activated particles in plasma

The purpose of this study is to activate sputtered particles and its reactive gas in the conventional sputtering method. We showed three new methods for the performance of this purpose and tried to the deposition of Titanium-dioxide films by reactive sputtering using these methods: (1) Deposition under the magnet parallel to the substrate: higher electron densities near the substrate are trapped in the magnetic tunnel, and the sputtered Ti atoms collided with these electrons are positively ionized. (2) Deposition by inserting a heating probe into the plasma space: the sputtered neutral Ti and the added oxygen are ionized by the thermal electrons emitted from the heating probe. (3) Deposition by He gas addition on the film growth: the excitation and ionization of neutral particles are enhanced by collision with He metastable atoms.;The conclusions drawn from this study are the following: (1) The magnet arrangement near substrate give additional screening of the substrate from the bombardment of electrons and Ti atoms with high energy. By this screening effect and the presence of the ionized atoms, the crystallo-graphical characteristics of films can be remarkably improved. (2) By using the heating probe technique, we are able to obtain rutile films on Si substrate at a low temperature, which is impossible by the conventional reactive sputtering method. (3) The growth of rutile films are achieved on the non-heated substrate in the mixture of Ar and He gas.