Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2011
A method has been developed to measure the stress in films which have been sputtered using a planar magnetron in a small-scale UHV chamber. The stress has been measured for diffent materials as a function of the sputtering gas pressure P and the substrate-target distance d. It is found that the stress in films of the same material deposited at different values of d is dependent only on the pressure-distance product (Pd), except at short (less than about 30mm) distances. The value of Pd required to produce a stress-free film is found to increase with the more extreme ratios between the atomic masses of the film material and the sputtering gas for the case of metals. However, the required Pd product is higher for the case of amorphous semiconductors. The stress in alloy films is also investigated.