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2002
Conference Paper
Titel
Simulation of reactive magnetron sputtering kinetics in real in-line processing chambers
Abstract
We present a dynamic coupled model of reactive sputtering suited for description of real in-line processing. In our model we divide the complex volume of a processing chamber into simple cells, e.g. parallelepipeds. For each cell the gettering kinetics of reactive gas at metalized surfaces as well as the sputtering kinetics of the target are calculated using a Runge-Kutta time step method. The inert and reactive gas flow is obtained via flow conductances defined for each connection between adjacent cells. For deposition of sputtered particles on chamber and substrate surfaces, a pressure dependent distribution matrix is used, which is obtained from singleparticle Monte Carlo calculations. The flow conductances for different pressure conditons are calculated using the well known "Direct Simulation Monte Carlo" method implemented on a Linux cluster, where for each volume cell an individual calculation task can be spawned. Tuned with flow conductances and particle distribution factors from Monte Carlo calculations our coupled model is capable of describing real in-line sputtering processes on a single-processor PC at almost real time speed. We present computer aided investigations on (i) the optimization of rate and homogeneity in the reactive sputter process using different target screening arrangements and (ii) the influence of substrate movement during reactive sputtering in transition mode. We apply the simulation on our in-line sputtering system Leybold A700V in comparison with experimental results.