Current-pressure characteristics of dc magnetron discharge for high-rate sputtering

Abstract

The current-pressure (I-P) characteristics of axially symmetric dc discharge of planar magnetron sputter were studied. The characteristics in argon and krypton gases for copper and aluminum cathodes and the spatial distributions of the plasma glow at different pressures are obtained. The sequence of local maximum and minimum is observed on current- pressure characteristics under defined conditions. The necessity of taking into account the gas heating by sputtered atoms for explaining the observed features of I-P characteristics is shown. Numerical simulation has allowed explaining the observed significant difference between the values of the discharge current density in argon and krypton.