Process transfer from R&D to small industrial cathode

HIPIMS has matured to an industrial technology within the last decade. Nevertheless, a significant number of investigations and material screening is performed on lab scale systems and cathodes. Exploiting these results and successfully transferring them to larger scale quite often presents a major challenge. In many cases the current, or better the peak current (peak current density) is referred as the main parameter for scaling.

Using copper targets with 3” circular diameter (~ 50 cm²) and 5” x 10” rectangular shape (~ 300 cm²) investigations were carried out on the main parameters for upscaling. First the plasma parameter electron temperature and plasma density, as well as optical emission spectroscopy data were collected. In addition to the plasma parameter the composition of the film forming species with respect to the ion to neutral ratio was measured using a gridded quartz configuration. For the larger cathode with 300 cm² area scaling the process was investigated. First the peak current density was used as measure for the scaling. Second the ion to neutral ratio of the film forming species was used as scaling parameter for the configuration of the pulse parameters at the cathode.