Time resolved optical emission spectroscopy of an HPPMS coating process

This paper deals with the time resolved optical emission spectroscopy of a high power pulse magnetron sputtering (HPPMS) physical vapour deposition coating process. With an industrial coating unit CC800/9 HPPMS (CemeCon AG, Wuerselen) a (Cr,Al,Si)N coating was deposited. During the coating process, an absolute calibrated Echelle spectrometer (ESA-3000) measured the intensities of the spectral lines of chromium (Cr), aluminium (Al) and molecular bands of nitrogen (N2). Time resolved measurements enable us to calculate different parameters such as the average velocity of sputtered Al and Cr atoms or the internal plasma parameters electron density ne and electron temperature kTe with a time resolution of 20 μs. With these parameters, we determine the ionization rates of Al, Cr, Ar and Kr atoms and the deposition densities of Al and Cr atoms. Thus simulated deposition densities of 1.75 x 1020 m-2 s-1 for chromium and 1.7 x 1022 m-2 s-1 for aluminium are reached.