Development of high rate sputtering system for the deposition of transparent conductive thin films with low resistivity and high adhesion on plastic film substrate.

1)磁控溅射和对向靶溅射中，衬底加热主要是由等离子体电子入射引起的。从靶表面发射的高能二次电子的入射是衬底加热的另一个来源。与磁控溅射系统相比，对向靶溅射系统的入射加热能量要低得多，因为衬底处于无等离子体状态。2)抑制晶体生长是获得具有良好表面平整度的薄膜所必需的。在ITO中加入少量的锌可以有效地抑制薄膜的晶体生长。抑制晶体生长也有效地降低了薄膜的压应力，当溅射气体气压在8m Torr左右时，可以实现薄膜的无应力。3)研究表明，采用靶排列相反的双阴极脉冲溅射有利于实现直流模式下氧化物薄膜的稳定高速溅射，并通过将阳极电位保持在地电位来抑制等离子体中带电粒子对衬底表面的轰击。4)我们发现ITO薄膜的电学性质随衬底位置的不同而发生明显的变化，并阐明这种不均匀主要是由于氧原子和In原子之间的发射角分布与靶表面的不同造成的。

In this study, damage-less sputter-deposition method with high deposition rate have been developed for the deposition of transparent conductive thin films with low resistivity on a plastic substrate.1)The substrate heating during sputter-deposition was mainly caused by the incidence of electrons from the plasma in both magnetron sputtering and facing target sputtering. Incidence of high energy secondary electrons emitted from the target surface was one of the other sources for the substrate heating. Compared with the magnetron sputtering system, the amount of the incident heating energy was much lower in facing target sputtering system, since the substrate was kept in a plasma free condition.2)The suppression of crystal growth was necessary to obtain a film with excellent surface smoothness. The addition of small amount of Zn into ITO was effective to suppress the crystal growth of the film. The suppression of crystal growth was also effective to reduce the compressive film stress and stress free films can be realized at a proper sputtering gas pressure around 8 m Torr.3)We showed that pulse sputtering of dual cathodes with opposed target arrangement was useful to realize a stable high rate sputtering of oxide film in a dc mode, and bombardment of substrate surface by charged particles in plasma can be suppressed by keeping the anode potential at earth potential. We also showed that combination of facing targets sputtering source and magnetron source works effectively as a dual sputtering system.4)We found that the electrical properties of the ITO films changes significantly with substrate position, and clarified that this non-uniformity of the film is mainly caused by the differences in the distribution of emission angles between oxygen atoms and In atoms from the target surface.