High Power Pulsed Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition: A Brief Overview of General Concepts and Early Results

The general concepts of the emerging plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique High Power Pulsed PECVD (HiPP-PECVD) are outlined; the main feature of HiPP-PECVD is the use of a power scheme characterized by high power pulses with a duty cycle of a few percent or less to generate a process plasma with a significantly higher plasma density compared to traditional PECVD. The higher plasma density leads to a more reactive plasma chemistry, which results in a higher rate of dissociation of the precursor molecules, i.e. a more efficient use of the source material. The high plasma density also leads to a higher degree of ionization of the growth species, enabling the possibility to guide the growth species to the substrate or applying an energetic bombardment of the growing film by applying a substrate bias. Early results on HiPP-PECVD have shown that HiPP-PECVD enables deposition of phase pure α-Al2O3 at substrate temperatures as low as 560 °C with mechanical properties comparable to standard thermal CVD grown material. Also, deposition of amorphous, copper containing carbon films at deposition rates higher than 30 μm/h has been demonstrated together with results showing the more efficient plasma chemistry. It is suggested that HiPP- PECVD is a promising tool for low temperature deposition of films with tailored properties for e.g. the hard coatings industry.