Low-frequency pulsed reactive magnetron discharges

Reactive magnetron sputtering isa powerful technique for deposition of cera mic coatings which however often presents an unstable behaviour at the orig in of a very low deposition rate for stoichiometric coatings. Various metho ds are available in the literature to avoid the drawback of this unstable s puttering behaviour. In this paper, we present a new method based on the lo w frequency modulation of the discharge current. Th,,im to be reached is th e establishment of a metastable periodic steady state cycle with,average se t point as close as possible as the critical set point located into the uns table domain of the sputtered flux - discharge current characteristic, and yielding the high rate deposition of the stoichiometric film.