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Abstract :
[en] Surface treatment technology represents some of the most advanced equipment in the glass, packaging industries and other industries using insulating substrates. In many cases the Corona discharges are the standard treatment for insulating materials such as: plastic polymers, papers, films, glass, but also metals1. Another process widely used in glass industry is the physical vapor deposition in high-power pulse regime (HiPIMS)2 which is the focus of attention since the 1990s by combining the advantages of magnetron sputtering in a highly ionized regime, giving new properties to the deposited materials3.
In Direct Current Magnetron Sputtering (DCMS), the directional feature of the deposition is generally caused by the ions accelerating towards a biased substrate. However, biasing the substrate represents in some cases a real challenge at an industrial scale. A Radio Frequency (RF) voltage is typically applied at the substrate electrode to control the average energy of ions bombarding the substrate4 and can lead to technical issues.
A technological alternative is presented in this work where a Lab-made bipolar HiPIMS (BPH) power supply has been used where positive pulses, combined with the classical negative pulses, increase the ion bombardment at the substrate. New parameters such as the positive voltage applied at the cathode (U+) have a significant impact on the energy of the species and thus influence the growth of the film.
This new process has been used for the sputtering of metallic titanium and titanium dioxide and compared to DC sputtering. Various Ti/TiO2 thin films deposited using DCMS, HiPIMS and BP-HiPIMS techniques on Si (100), and glass substrates are compared by X-ray diffraction (XRD) while the plasma phase was studied by Mass Spectrometry and Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF)5. It is shown that the energy of argon and titanium ions is affected by the positive voltage applied at the cathode. Moreover, the BP-HiPIMS regime influences the crystalline constitution of the titanium dioxide thin films.
