Progress in Surface Science, vol. 7, pp. 71-I 1I. Pergamon Press.

Printed in Great Britain

GLOW DISCHARGE SPUTTERING

W. D. WESTWOOD
Bell-Northern Research, Box 3512, Station ‘C’, Ottawa, Canada

Contents
1. Introduction 71

2. Glow Discharge as Ion Source 72

A. Inert gas sputtering 72
B. Reactive sputtering 75
C. Discharge uniformity 76

3. Sputtered Species and Their Transport” to Substrate 76

A. Sputtered species 76
B. Particle energies 77
C. Effect of residual gases 79

4. Arrival at Substrate 80
A. Deposition rates and uniformity 80
(i) Inert gas discharges 80
(ii) Effect of residual gases 83
(iii) Reactive sputtering 83
(iv) Multi-element targets 85
B. Substrate temperature 86
C. Nucleation and growth 87
(i) Nucleation 88
(ii) Epitaxy 88
(iii) Morphology 91
(iv) Reactively sputtered film growth 92
D. Crystal phases 94
(i) Phases peculiar to thin films 94
(ii) Effect of substrate bias 95
(iii) Mixtures and compounds 99
E. Crystal orientation 100
F. Stress 102
G. Adhesion 103
(i) Simple interfacial adhesion 104
(ii) Interdiffusion between two materials 104
(iii) Formation of intermediate layers 104
(iv) Mechanical adhesion 105

5. Conclusion 106
Abbreviations 107
References 107

1. Introduction
The rapid growth of interest in sputtering since the routine attainment of pressures in the 10m4torr
the early 1960’s has been due to the utility of the range, evaporation displaced sputtering for this
technique for the fabrication of thin films and to the application. It was the realization that a much wider
increasing use of films in modern technology. This range of materials could be prepared as films by
is really a rebirth of the sputtering technology, sputtering than by evaporation which spurred the
which developed in the half century following the rapid developments of the last 15 years. A cursory
discovery of the sputtering phenomenon by examination of the literature shows that films con-
Grove”‘. During that period, the technique was taining almost every element in the periodic table
widely used for the preparation of metallic films, have been prepared, many of them by the radio-
which were generally employed as reflectors. When frequency (RF) sputtering technique first described
improvements in vacuum technology made possible by Anderson et cd.‘*’as recently as 1962.

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