An Investigation On Thin Film Deposition By Low-Pressure Pulsed Arc

The pulsed arc ion plating process has advantages of high ionization rate and ion energy, rapid deposition rate. Compared with the DC bias, it improves adhesion and membrane-based homogeneous, so that the wear resistance of the coated substrate has been improved. As the advantages above, pulse arc deposition has been used widely. In this paper, the laboratory-built pulse power was used to produce pulsed arc deposition and an investigation was focus on the phenomenon of arc discharge. We coated Low-E film under the fixed experiment conditions.The pulse forming network of three-order and ten-orders was studied by numerical simulation method. The results showed that the morphology of square-wave is better, and the width of pulse is wider with more PFN section. It is difficult to produce arc discharge by pulse power only, so the high voltage ignition trigger device was used to produce arc plasma between two poles. We have redesigned vacuum interface part of the triggering device to avoid the generation of creep age phenomenon; in addition, we also redesigned the structure of Anode in order to fix Polymer film easily.The pulsed arc deposition was studied in this paper. Firstly arc discharge current and voltage were acquired synchronously by computer during the arc discharge, the different current rise rate at different PFN charging voltage, and arc discharge resistor changes with different work pressure were observed. Some experimental phenomenon was explained. We obtained the Equation between voltage and current under certain experimental conditions, this result in line with the theoretical model of arc voltage characteristics. The influence of the number of pulse discharge, the PFN charging voltage, additional magnetic field, and work pressure for the thin film deposition on silicon was texted. Considering the number of macro particles and the deposition rate through continuous experiments, we found the effect of thin film deposition was better when work pressure is 20Pa, PFN charging voltage is 140V, the synchronous magnetic solenoid is introduced between the anode and cathode.Low-E film was coated on polyimide by pulsed cathodic arc with the fixed experimental conditions, and the spectroscopy ellipsometer was used to test transmittance of film. The results reveal there is no significant decrease of the infrared light transmittance for the single Ag film. We add Ti metal layer to protect the Ag layer, which about lnm thickness on the top of the Ag layer. Low-E film was obtained by method of pulsed cathodic arc under the fixed experimental conditions.