Langmuir probe and optical emission spectroscopy studies in magnetron sputtering plasmas for Al-doped ZnO film deposition

Abstract

This work reports investigation of the Al-doped ZnO (AZO) film deposition process, at different working pressures, in a conventional magnetron sputtering system. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the plasma formation and deposition process using various diagnostic tools, by utilizing low-temperature deposition process. In addition, this paper also presents a systematic Langmuir probe (LP) analysis procedure to determine the maximum information about plasma parameters. For the present study, we have extensively used LP method to characterize the deposition process for the control of plasma parameters. Along with the LP method, we have also used optical emission spectroscopy diagnostic to examine the favorable deposition condition for the fabrication of conductive AZO film. Utilizing diagnostics, this also reports measurements of ion current density, substrate temperature, and deposition rates to fabricate low resistivity films of ∼3 mΩ cm.