ECR-POWERED SPUTTERING TECHNIQUES FOR THE DEPOSITION OF METAL THIN FILMS (INCLUDING SUPERCONDUCTORS)

THIS PROJECT WOULD DEVELOP AN ECR SPUTTER SOURCE FOR METAL OXIDE THIN FILM DEPOSITION EMPLOYING SOLID METAL OXIDE TARGETS AS A MATERIAL SOURCE. IN PHASE I, YBCO WILL BE USEDAS THE SPECIFIC METAL OXIDE IN ORDER TO EVALUATE AND ELIMINATE THE EFFECTS OF FILM DAMAGE BY ENERGETIC PARTICLE BOMBARDMENT ORDINARILY SEEN IN CONVENTIONAL ON-AXIS SPUTTERING EXPERIMENTS. RECENT WORK BY ANOTHER GROUP SUGGESTS A WAY TO DEVELOP A LARGE AREA HIGH RATE ECR METAL OXIDE DEPOSITION SOURCE WHICH CAN OVERCOME PREVIOUS DIFFICULTIES WITH ON-AXIS SPUTTER MAGNETRONS. EXPERIMENTS WILL BE CARRIED OUT ON A SUITABLY MODIFIED ECR TEST STAND WHICH WILL ENABLE US TO CHARACTERIZE BOTH THE PLASMA FORMATION THROUGH MICROWAVE ECR PLASMA PRODUCTION AND THE RFSPUTTERING OF METAL OXIDE TARGETS. THE TECHNOLOGY WOULD BE COMPATIBLE WITH CURRENTLY AVAILABLE SEMICONDUCTOR TOOLS.