The basic principle of sputtering coating and the ion bombardment process

The basic principle of sputtering coating and the ion bombardment process

The core mechanism of sputtering coating can be summarized as three stages: "momentum transfer - particle emission - gas-phase deposition". In the plasma environment generated by glow discharge or ion source, inert gas ions such as Ar⁺ acquire several keV of kinetic energy under the acceleration of an electric field and collide with the surface of the target material as the source of coating materials. During this process, the kinetic energy of the ions is transferred to the surface atoms of the target material through collisions between atoms. When the energy gained by the target material atoms exceeds their binding energy in the lattice, they will detach from the target surface and become sputtering particles. These sputtering particles move towards the substrate in a vacuum environment and eventually deposit on the substrate surface to form a film. The process of ion bombardment of the target material is not a simple event of particle collision, but a complex process accompanied by various physical phenomena. From a microscopic perspective, the collisions between ions and target material atoms can be classified as "elastic collision" and "inelastic collision": In elastic collision, ions mainly transfer kinetic energy to the target material atoms, which is the main cause of generating sputtering particles; In inelastic collision, it will lead to the excitation of electrons, ionization or lattice vibration of the target material atoms, and thereby cause heating, secondary electron emission and other phenomena. These phenomena are interrelated and mutually influential, jointly determining the efficiency and film layer performance of sputtering coating.

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