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Time resolved optical emission spectroscopy of an HPPMS coating process

S Theiß 1 , N Bibinov 2 , N Bagcivan 1 , M Ewering 1 , P Awakowicz 2 and K Bobzin 1
1 Surface Engineering Institute, RWTH Aachen University,
Augustinerbach 4-22, D-52062 Aachen, Germany
2 Institute for Electrical Engineering and Plasma Technology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
D-44780 Bochum, Germany
E-mail: theiss@iot.rwth-aachen.de

Abstract. This paper deals with the time resolved optical emission spectroscopy (OES) of a high power pulse magnetron sputtering (HPPMS) physical vapor deposition (PVD) coating process. With an industrial coating unit CC800/9 HPPMS (CemeCon AG, Würselen) a (Cr,Al,Si)N coating was deposited. During the coating process, an absolute calibrated Echelle-spectrometer (ESA-3000) measured the intensities of the spectral lines of Chromium (Cr), Aluminum (Al) and molecular bands of nitrogen (N 2 ). Time resolved measurements enable us to calculate different parameters like the average velocity of sputtered Al- and Cr-atoms or the internal plasma parameters electron density n e and electron temperature kT e with a time resolution of 20 µs. With these parameters, we determine the ionization rates of Al-, Cr-, Ar- and Kr-atoms and the deposition densities of Al- and Cr-atoms. Thus simulated deposition densities of 1.75 · 10 20 m −2 s −1 for Chromium and 1.7 · 10 22 m −2 s −1 for Aluminum are reached.

Keywords: HPPMS, HIPIMS, OES, optical emission spectroscopy, absolute calibrated

[Submitted to: J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.]

[Time resolved optical emission spectroscopy of an HPPMS coating process 2]

1. Introduction: