Macroscopic Thin Film Deposition Model for the Two-Reactive-Gas Sputtering Process

The presence of a second reactive gas in the magnetron sputtering chamber makes the process much more complicated, and the process control much more difficult than in the case of a single reactive gas. Macroscopic models have been developed in order to explain the complex phenomena and to provide support for the process control. These models are able to explain the nonlinearities of the process and the strong coupling between the control channels.

This paper introduces a model created with the intention to of gaining a good grasp of the process, especially regarding the conditions necessary to obtain the required stoichiometry of the film deposited on the substrate. For this purpose, we modelled the formation of the desired ternary compound both directly from the available particle fluxes and from intermediary compounds. The surface of the substrate is divided into eight dynamically variable regions, covered by different compounds, each exposed to the streams of five types of particles.

We present the analytical model and provide simulation results in order to demonstrate its capability toof describeing the nonlinear phenomena, which that characterisze the two-gas sputtering process.