Investigation of the Plasma of a Magnetron Discharge during Titanium Deposition

In the present work the deposition of titanium layers using a planar-magnetron sputtering system is performed. To optimize the sputtering process and to improve the layer quality the plasma has been monitored in front of the target and near the substrate. The plasma was studied by means of Langmuir-probe diagnostics and optical emission spectroscopy (OES). The internal plasma parameters (n_e, k_B T_e) and the relative power dependence of the neutral densities (n_Ti) at the target as well as at the substrate have been determined as functions of discharge power and pressure. It was found that the plasma densities increase with power and pressure and reach a maximum at a certain gas pressure (0.8 Pa) connected with a maximum of the energy influx and a maximum of the mass density of the deposited films.