Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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VA: Fachverband Vakuumphysik und Vakuumtechnik

VA 4: Vacuum Systems and Tools

VA 4.1: Talk

Monday, March 11, 2013, 15:00–15:20, H6

Thin film combinatorial libraries for materials research — •Andrei Ionut Mardare and Achim Walter Hassel — Institut für Chemische Technologie Anorganischer Stoffe, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, 4040, Altenberger Str.69, Linz, österreich

Many novel materials are developed nowadays by using combinatorial methods. The present work presents a much cheaper alternative to co-sputtering for the preparation of thin film combinatorial libraries by using a state of the art thermal co-evaporator. Three different thermal sources can be used simultaneously in a self-made system. The usual high cost water cooled electrical feedthroughs providing the high currents necessary for the thermal elements are successfully replaced by Cu rods externally attached to cost effective computer processor coolers. The background vacuum level is 10-7mbar ensuring a low contaminants level during the film formation. Using crystal quartz balances, the flux of each source can be individually controlled and the desired compositional gradient can be obtained by adjusting the evaporation power. Moreover, each source can be individually moved in the vertical plane so that the source-substrate distance can be adjusted for each element. This action will affect the individual thickness gradients through the cosine law of evaporation giving the user an extra degree of freedom for tuning the final library composition. A wide range of pure metals can be used as sources as well as semiconducting materials such as Si or oxides such as WO3 or MoO3. The use of alloys such as AlCu or MgZn as a single evaporation source was also successfully tested opening the door toward quaternary combinatorial libraries.