Sputtering evaporation is a physical method for the growth of thin films. It is a high vacuum technology, depending of the type of material to be grown, that allows evaporating a large variety of materials: from simple metals to complex inorganic materials. Films can be grown with highly controlled thickness. The method consists in introducing a gas inside the growth chamber (with the total pressure regulated in the mTorr range) and under applying a high direct or radio frequency voltage (when target is a metal or an insulator respectively) and with a gun (magnetron) to create a plasma. Plasma ionizes the gas, that is then accelerated by the high voltage and impacts on target surface evaporating atoms from the surface. Gas is usually argon, although oxygen or nitrogen can be used for more complex materials. Evaporated atoms are deposited over the surface that the film must be grown. In variance with other physical methods, sputtering technique is highly reproducible and thicknesses can be very well calibrated by the depositing time.
Process chamber base pressure: 10-7 mbar. Ar, N2, O2 gasses.
QCM (Quartz Micro Balance) for monitoring of deposition rate and film thickness
Sample tilt and variable distance are not possible in our PVD-system
CSIC-ICMAB
Spain
MS
Growth of oxide and metallic thin films or clusters
High vacuum system (10-6 Torr) mainly dedicated to the growth oxides thin films by the sputtering technique. The equipment has different guns (1" and 1.3") to grow in RF and DC, it also has a cluster gun. Growth can be done from room temperature up to 800ºC, in a controlled atmosphere of Ar, O2 and Ar+5%H2. Some metals can also be grown as long as they do not require ultra high vacuum.
INL
Portugal
Kenosistec KS1000
Confocal and co-deposition of a wide range of conductive and non-conductive materials.
DC and RF magnetrons
Substrate temperature control up to 350°C
Possibility to deposit up to 11 different materials without breaking vacuum
In SEM a beam is scanned over a sample surface while a signal from secondary or back-scattered electrons is recorded. SEM is used to image an area of the sample with nanometric resolution, and also to measure its composition, crystallographic phase distribution and local texture.
XRD provides non-destructive information on the structural order of a material. At large scattering angles XRD permits to identify different crystal phases and to quantify lattice distances and crystalline volume fractions. At low angles of incidence the surface roughness of a single crystal and the thickness of a deposition layer can be obtained.
AFM is a surface sensitive technique permitting to obtain a microscopic image of the topography of a material surface and certain properties (like friction force, magnetization properties…). Typical lateral image sizes are within a range of only a few Nanometers to several Micrometers, and height changes of less than a Nanometer.
We offer magneto-transport characterizations of semiconductor and metallic samples at temperatures down to liquid He and fields up to 7T. Density and mobility of carriers are measured through Hall effect, as well as quantum transport phenomena in 2D systems at low T. Carrier populations can be tuned by bias voltages and external illumination.
XPS is a surface spectroscopic technique for quantitative measurements of the elemental composition or stoichiometry and the chemical state of the present elements, like their oxidation state and chemical bonds. XPS is highly surface sensitive, giving chemical and binding energy information from the a narrow region close to the surface.
