The physical reason for the apparently low deposition rate during high-power pulsed magnetron sputtering

In high-power pulsed magnetron sputtering, a large power density is applied giving rise to a high degree of ionization. From an application point of view, the major drawback of this technology is the considerably lower deposition rate as compared to DC magnetron sputtering. Using transport-of-ions-in-matter simulations, we show that the apparently low deposition rate can be understood based on the non-linear energy dependence of the sputtering yields. Our calculations are consistent with deposition-rate measurements on Cu films as well as with published deposition-rate data for Ti [Konstantinidis S, Dauchot JP, Ganciu M, Ricard A, Hecq M. J Appl Phys 2006;99:013307].