Deposition of Zr-ZrOX and Y-YXOY films by reactive magnetron sputtering

The effect of target temperature in reactive magnetron sputtering of Zr and Y has been investigated by studying the effect of hot and cold targets on process conditions. The effect of discharge power and oxygen flow were studied and measurements made of deposition rates which were found to mainly depend on oxygen flow rate. The use of the hot-cathode technique allowed increases in deposition rate to be made and measurements showed that voltage-current characteristics were significantly different from those of normal magnetron sputtering. Films of Zr-ZrOX and Y-YXOY were deposited and their structure analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) which showed that single-phase oriented monoclinic ZrO2 films, with relatively large deposition rates (∼1.5 nm/s) can be produced using the “hot'' target technique.