The position effect on electrical field intensity for metal deposition process

Material characteristics, such as electric potential, distance between target material and substrate, and so on, are important parameters for vacuum metal films deposition (sputtering) system. Properly controlling these parameters during the sputtering process can reduce the residual stress after deposition and can effectively improve the deformation of substrate and density of metal thin film. This study aims at simulating a vacuum metal film deposition system for substrate application with normal metal material. Both the copper foil, as a target material, and the substrate that is placed on a carrier platform are included in a vacuum chamber. The argon ion gas is excited by a radio frequency power generator to form the plasma source in the sputtering system. “Glow Discharge” of the “Paschen Curve” during plasma generation process is employed to excite the argon ion gas to bombard the target material. The ejected atoms of target material are deposited on the substrate surface to form the desired thin films. Several different parameters, such as radio frequency power, electric field intensity, distance between the target materials and the substrate, and so on, are discussed in this article. Numerical analysis results indicate that the distance between the substrate and target materials may affect the density of metal film significantly. The MATLAB simulation results can provide the technique of finding better workpiece height and high coating quality for the semi-conduction industrial adopting sputtering system for metal thin film production.