The short courses will take place on Sunday, June 2, 2024 and will consist of the following:
- Short course A: A. Anders – Plasma deposition of thin films and related processing of materials
- Short course B: G. Abadias – Stress evolution during thin film growth by physical vapor deposition
Course descriptions
Short course A: “Plasma deposition of thin films and related processing of materials”
Instructor: André Anders, Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering, Leipzig, Germany
Course Objectives
This course is intended for students, engineers, technicians, and others interested in plasma-assisted deposition of thin film and functional coatings. A good portion of the course is dedicated to the introduction and review the fundamentals of low-temperature plasmas and discharges to produce them. While gas plasmas are often used, emphasis is put on discharges that lead to ionization of plasma with condensable species: metal or metal-containing plasmas, leading to coatings from the plasma phase. In contrast to other courses, the role of plasmas and sheaths (plasma boundaries) will be clearly distinguished and explained. This distinction is will be appreciated when examples of processes with plasmas are given, including but not limited to, plasmas made by ion plating, (filtered) cathodic arcs and by high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS). After a couple of decades of research, HiPIMS has become an industrially used extension of sputtering technology. With sputtered metals ionized, the microstructure of coatings and resulting properties can be tuned by energetic condensation even when substrates are kept near room temperature. Recent developments of HiPIMS will be discussed, including reactive HiPIMS and so-called “hybrid technology” where one of the components is HiPIMS.
Short course B: “Stress evolution during thin film growth by physical vapor deposition”
Instructor: Gregory Abadias, University of Poitiers, France
Course Objectives
Thin films produced by physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques are usually under a stressed state, due to the mechanical constraint imposed macroscopically by the substrate on which they are deposited. Several factors are affecting the resulting stress state, which can be either tensile or compressive, with magnitude up to several GPa. The understanding and control of stress development in thin films is essential, especially for nanoscale systems, to ensure device integrity.
This short course will provide an overview on how film stress develops during growth, how it is affected by the main PVD process parameters, and how to mitigate it. The course will be structured around the following objectives:
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- Describe the different stress sources in PVD thin films
- Identify the links between growth stages and intrinsic stress evolution during polycrystalline film growth
- Provide the basic concepts and underlying atomistic and microscopic mechanisms at the origin of stress generation and relaxation
- Learn about stress measurement methods (wafer curvature, XRD) and their limitations
- Understand the influence of microstructure (grain size, texture) and main process parameters (working pressure, bias voltage, vapor flux, substrate temperature) on the stress development
- Discuss the role of energetic species, involved during magnetron sputtering, HiPIMS or ion-beam assisted deposition, on defect incorporation and compressive stress build-up
- Gain knowledge on stress manipulation strategies to control and engineer stress for specific applications