Laser assisted magnetron sputter deposition with ultrashort pulses

超短脉冲激光辅助磁控溅射沉积

• 批准号: 515471-2017
• 负责人: Legare, Francois
• 金额: $ 3.64万
• 依托单位: Institut national de la recherche scientifique
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Collaborative Research and Development Grants
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=690007
• 关键词: Laser; assisted; magnetron; sputter; deposition

The fabrication of thin films and nanostructures can be realized through various techniques. This enables the tailoring of materials including their optical, electrical, and magnetic properties. Among the various approaches, sputtering is a physical vapour deposition technique which is based on ions colliding with a target from which material is detached and deposited on a substrate. In magnetron sputtering (MS), an electromagnetic field confined near the surface of the target is used to ionize the inert gas and to create aplasma, from which ions are produced and accelerated to bombard the target materials from which high quality uniform thin films are obtained. While the rate of deposition scales with the number of ions, it is tempting of using a high pressure of inert gas, but this comes at the costs of low quality films in terms of structure and density. Therefore, the limiting factor for MS is a low rate of deposition thus limiting the industrial applications of this technique.Over the recent years, our industrial partner Plasmionique Inc. has developed, in collaboration with INRS-EMT researchers, a hybrid technique called MS/PLD (Pulsed Laser Deposition). They have demonstrated that combining MS with a 20 Hz nanosecond UV laser interacting with the target allows the retention of a high rate of deposition while keeping the pressure sufficiently low enough to enable high quality films. As the fluence needed to reach the ablation threshold is reduced at lower pulse duration, with the inverse of the square root of the pulse duration (down to 1 picosecond - ps - pulse duration), we hypothesize that MS/PLD will benefit fromthe use of ultrashort pulses for triggering and maintaining the magnetron discharge. Using ultrafast laser systems, we will study MS/PLD with ultrashort pulses from 0.04 to 10 ps. Furthermore, ultrashort pulsed laser are operated at much high repetition rate, thus offering the possibility of studying the scaling of MS/PLD to higher laser repetition rate for increasing the rate of deposition (e.g. 5 kHz vs 20 Hz represents a factor of 125).

薄膜和纳米结构的制造可以通过各种技术来实现。这使得材料的定制成为可能，包括其光学、电学和磁学特性。在各种方法中，溅射是一种物理气相沉积技术，其基于离子与靶材碰撞，材料从靶材上分离并沉积在基板上。在磁控溅射 (MS) 中，使用限制在靶材表面附近的电磁场来电离惰性气体并产生等离子体，由此产生离子并加速以轰击靶材，从而获得高质量的均匀薄膜。虽然沉积速率与离子数量成正比，但使用高压惰性气体是很诱人的，但这是以结构和密度方面的低质量薄膜为代价的。因此，MS 的限制因素是沉积速率低，从而限制了该技术的工业应用。近年来，我们的工业合作伙伴 Plasmionique Inc. 与 INRS-EMT 研究人员合作开发了一种称为 MS/ PLD（脉冲激光沉积）。他们已经证明，将 MS 与与目标相互作用的 20 Hz 纳秒紫外激光相结合，可以保持高沉积速率，同时保持压力足够低，以形成高质量的薄膜。由于达到消融阈值所需的能量密度在较低的脉冲持续时间下会降低，并且脉冲持续时间的平方根呈倒数（低至 1 皮秒 - ps - 脉冲持续时间），因此我们假设 MS/PLD 将受益于使用用于触发和维持磁控管放电的超短脉冲。使用超快激光系统，我们将研究 0.04 至 10 ps 超短脉冲的 MS/PLD。此外，超短脉冲激光以非常高的重复频率运行，因此提供了研究将 MS/PLD 缩放到更高激光重复频率以提高沉积速率的可能性（例如，5 kHz 与 20 Hz 代表 125 倍）。