Optimization of Voltage Pulse for Higher Deposition Rate in High Power Impluse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS)

High Power Impluse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) is a new member of MS family featuring instantaneous high power density, high ionization rate and draws much attention from both academic and industrial fields in recent years. However the lower deposition rate of HiPIMS is sometimes a subject of criticism. To increase deposition rates of HiPIMS, a novel hybrid pulse magnetron sputtering technology is presented by coupling two independent pulses. The higher and shorter pulse is utilized to ionize the discharge, and the lower and longer pulse is designed to preserve discharge. Consequently, high density plasma is gained without the need of higher average power. In this paper, following our work reported in SVC2016, we focus on the effect of amplitude, frequency, width of high-voltage pulse on average discharge current and sample current, etc. Ti and Cr cathode are powered with this hybrid pulse. The deposition rate of CrN has been substantially enhanced by proper choice of high-voltage pulse without the increase of input power. Meanwhile the films possess the denser microstructure and higher hardness. These results have demonstrated that our novel hardware is a useful tool to achieve the high-rate deposition rate and superior microstructure of fabricated films compared to conventional HiPIMS.