Antireflective layers produced by pulsed magnetron sputter technology

Needed for various applications are antireflective layers on glass, foils or plastic plates. Chiefly used as low-index layer is SiO2 whereas TiO2 is particularly useful as high-index layer. Today, various sputtering and plasma-activated evaporation techniques are used on an industrial scale. In this paper it is shown that pulsed magnetron sputter techniques (PMS-process) offers facility to deposit SiO2-TiO2-systems especially on large areas and at high rates in a reliable and reproducible manner also under industrial conditions. Used to carry out the investigations were dual magnetron sputter systems (DMS-system) with length of 600 to 3500 nm. Employed as power sources were sine-wave generators with MF powers up to 100 kW and frequencies in a range of 50-80 kHz. Silicon and titanium were used as target material and oxygen served as reactive gas. Explained are possibilities to adjust the operating point of the reactive process. The correlation between magnetron discharge parameters, dep osition rates and layer properties are depicted.