Development of ECR sheet plasma source for ion-enhanced reactive sputter deposition

An ECR plasma source is developed to generate rectilinearly uniform plasmas 20 cm in width. The source consists of a pair of permanent magnets and a slot antenna (slotted waveguide). The poles of the magnets face oppositely each other and a line cusp field is generated in a vacuum chamber. The antenna is set in between the magnets. Uniform O/sub 2/ plasmas are obtained in the range of 20 cm. The source is combined with a magnetron sputtering cathode and applies to ion-enhanced reactive sputtering deposition. Films of TiO/sub 2/ are deposited for optical coatings. Refractive index of 2.5 is obtained by reactive sputtering in the oxygen ECR plasma. The deposition rate increased by a factor of four with O/sub 2//Ar mixing gas.