A novel remote plasma sputtering technique for depositing high-performance optical thin films

Abstract

This paper describes a novel remote plasma sputtering technique for depositing optical thin films. This technology is based on generating intensive plasma remotely from the target and then magnetically steering the plasma to the target to realize the sputter deposition. It overcomes several of inherent limitations in conventional sputtering techniques and realizes the fully uniform erosion over the surface of the target and less target poison. This allows a uniform reaction in the plasma phase when performing reactive sputtering, leading to the formation and deposition of material with a uniform stoichiometry and gives pseudo-independence of target current and voltage. This pseudo-independence offers a great deal of flexibility with regard to the control of growth conditions and film properties, the benefits include control of stress, very low deposition rates for ultra thin films. By remote reactive sputtering, dense metal-oxide optical thin films (SiO2, Ta2O5, Nb2O5) with a high deposition rate, excellent optical properties are achieved. High process stability shows an excellent time terminating accuracy for multilayer coating thickness control. Typically, thin film thickness control to <±1% is accomplished simply using time. The multilayer coating, including anti-reflection, dichroic mirror and 2μm laser mirrors are presented.