Debris reduction for copper and diamond-like carbon thin films produced by magnetically guided pulsed laser deposition

The effectiveness of debris reduction using magnetically guided pulsed laser deposition (MGPLD) is reported here. KrF laser pulses (248 nm) of 100 mJ energy were focused to intensities of 6×109 W/cm2 onto the surface of a copper or a carbon source target and a magnetic field of 0.3 T as used to steer the plasma around a curved arc of 0.5 m length to the deposition substrate. Debris counts were compared for films produced by the MGPLD and conventional PLD (nonguided) techniques. A significant reduction in particulates of size greater than 0.1 μm was achieved using MGPLD. For the copper films, particulate count was reduced from 150 000 particles/cm2/nm to 50 particulates/cm2/nm and for diamond-like carbon thin films particulate count was reduced from 25 000 particles/cm2/nm to 1200 particles/cm2/nm.