Increase of the deposition rate in reactive sputtering of metal oxides using a ceramic nitride target

We present a method to eliminate hysteresis effects and to increase the deposition rate for the reactive sputtering of metal oxides. This is achieved by using a ceramic nitride target in an argon-oxygen atmosphere. Although the use of a ceramic nitride target leads to pronounced changes of the processing characteristics, incorporation of nitrogen into the growing film is very small. These observations can be theoretically predicted using an extension of Berg's model [S. Berg and T. Nyberg, Thin Solid Films 476, 215 (2005)] to two different reactive gases and a compound target.