COMPARISON OF UNBALANCED MAGNETRON SPUTTERING AND FILTERED ARE EVAPORATION FOR THE PREPARATION OF FILMS ONTO INSULATING SUBSTRATES

The performance of a steered-are evaporation source is compared to the unbalanced magnetron, as to its performance in the preparation of ele mental and reactively produced compound films. Materials investigated include Al, Ti, Cu, TiN, and Al2O3. In reactive processing the ionised metal constituent provided by are evaporation appears to make the kin etics of the substrate reaction process much more simple than those re quired with argon-ion-assisted sputter processes where a careful balan ce must be maintained. If has been found that in the case of TiN bette r quality films could be prepared onto room temperature substrates by are evaporation than by sputtering, while for Al2O3 the are-deposited films show good adhesion, good optical properties and were nearly stoi chiometric with a refractive index of 1.66. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.