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HIPIMS Power for Improved Thin Film Coatings
Author(s) -
Ochs Dirk.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
vakuum in forschung und praxis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1522-2454
pISSN - 0947-076X
DOI - 10.1002/vipr.200800362
Subject(s) - high power impulse magnetron sputtering , sputtering , materials science , coating , optoelectronics , sputter deposition , impulse (physics) , engineering physics , thin film , nanotechnology , engineering , physics , quantum mechanics
High Power Impulse Sputtering (HIPIMS) has received increasing attention as a new sputtering technique. The main feature of the HIPIMS process is the high ionization percentages in the sputter flux. This can be used for film densification, surface modification, trench filling and other applications. Layers produced with HIPIMS show superior properties in many applications. The most investigated and promising HIPIMS application is for hard coatings in wear and corrosion protection (e.g., CrN or TiN). This application and the related coating equippment has been discussed in detail by W.‐D. Münz in a previous issue [1]. The significantly lower heat transfer to the substrate compared to standard magnetron sputtering is another advantage of the HIPIMS process. This enables high rate coating even on temperature sensitive substrates. HIPIMS also significantly changes the hysteresis curve in reactive sputtering, offering a much easier control of the reactive process. HIPIMS power supplies can be added to existing sputter systems with little or no system modification. By this way the process capability can be extended easily. Production power supplies with pulse energies up to 16MW and pulse frequencies up to 1 kHz are available. Design and features of these power supplies are discussed in this article.