Plasma diagnostics of magnetic field assisted ionized magnetron sputtering

The effects of an axially applied, axial magnetic field on ionized magnetro n sputtering. with an internal inductively coupled plasma (ICP) antenna wer e diagnosed with a Langmuir probe, an impedance probe, and optical emission spectroscopy (OES) to find an operation regime for low energy,ionized depo sition for low defect density films. A very weak axial magnetic field (B-z) of 20 G was found to reduce plasma potentials by 45% while keeping the ion current density at 80% of the value without B-z. Also based on OES measure ments, the plasma density was increased by three times with 5 G of B-z but the coil sputtering was markedly reduced by increasing B-z. However, the ra dial uniformity of ion saturation current with B-z was about 2.5%-10-4% whi ch was less than the 1.3%-5.5% observed without B-z (std.dev./avg. x 100%). However,, when the substrate was moved close to ICP coil by 1 cm from 5 cm above the ICP antenna,the radial uniformity was: improved to 0.9%-5%, whic h is thought to be due to a balance between-mode and H-mode discharge. (C) 1999 American Vacuum Society. [S0734-2101(99)11604-X].