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AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsHirohito Yamaguchi, Masahiro Kanai, Atsushi Koike, Katsunori Oya
Estimating the term…
Sputtering particles emitted from a target are ionized by the Penning ionization process. And the sputtering particles ionized are caused to fly in the direction of the substrate by a magnetic field formed by ambipolar diffusion due to a magnetic field generating means without scattering the particles to deposit the particles on the substrate. The partial pressure of a sputtering discharge gas in a discharge space is set to 1.3 Pa or less and a distance from the target to an ionization space is within twice the mean free path of the partial pressure of the sputtering discharge gas.
A deposited-film forming method of forming a thin film composed of an alloy by sputtering by use of an alloy target, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
Backward citations are indexed for grants only.
Operating with cathodic sputtering: using supplementary magnetic fields
Introduction of auxiliary energy into the plasma: using electrons, e.g. triode sputtering
Introduction of auxiliary energy into the plasma: inductive energy
Electric discharge tubes or discharge lamps
Term end not estimated
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a deposited-film forming method of forming a thin film composed of an alloy on a substrate by use of an alloy target (a sputtering method) and, more particularly, to a method of forming a deposited film on a substrate by ionizing sputtering particles (an ionized sputtering method).
2. Related Background Art
FIG. 1 is a sectional view showing the structure of an ionization sputtering apparatus to which a method of forming a deposited film in an embodiment of the present invention is applied;
FIG. 2 is a sectional view showing the structure of an ionization mechanism; and
FIG. 3 is a graph showing the change of the composition percentage of the deposited alloy film compared with the composition percentage of the alloy target as plotted at fixed intervals of discharge time in Example 4 of the present invention.
Next, a method of forming a deposited film in an embodiment of the invention will be described in detail below by referring to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a sectional view showing the structure of an ionization sputtering apparatus to which a method of forming a deposited film in an embodiment of the present invention is applied. FIG. 1 is a side sectional view of this ionization sputtering apparatus. As shown in FIG. 1, this ionization sputtering apparatus is provided with an ionization mechanism 5 of the hot cathode type. In the method of forming a deposited film according to the present invention, i.e., the ionization sputtering method, sputtering particles sputtered from a target 2 are ionized by the Penning ionization method (the first step), and the ionized sputtering particles are caused to fly in the direction of a substrate 8 by the ambipolar diffusion action due to a magnetic field 7 generated by magnetic field generating means 6 (the second step) and are deposited on the substrate 8.
A chamber 1 which is a metal vessel made of stainless steel, aluminum, etc., is electrically grounded and configured so as to keep airtightness by use of a gate valve not shown in the drawing. The volume of the chamber 1, which is determined according to the sizes of the target 2 and substrate 8, is about 20 to 1000 liters with the exception of special cases.
A combined exhaust system 11 is a combined exhaust system capable of reducing an internal pressure of the chamber 1 from atmospheric pressure to about 1×10−5 Pa and can control exhaust speed by use of a conductance valve (not shown) which is an exhaust speed regulator.