Industrial precision deposition for microelectronics and next generation hard disk

In different industries, an increasing demand can be obsd. for precision depositions. This includes both ultra thin protective coatings on micro parts and deposition of functional films in microelectronics. Filtered cathodic arc is one of the most promising candidates as an industrial PVD technol. for highly sophisticated applications. Currently, in advanced industrial sources the no. of droplets is reduced to about one millionth in comparison to unfiltered arc. This results in films, contg. less then one micrometer size particle per cm2-good enough for many advanced tool coatings but still insufficient for applications such as the deposition of the top coat on hard disks or barrier coatings prior to copper metalization in semiconductor device manufg. In the present paper, recent improvements of the filtered high current pulsed arc technique are described, resulting in a nearly complete droplet elimination-to only a few ten-nm-size particle on a square meter.