Effects of pulsing frequencies on macro-particle contamination during pulsed vacuum arc deposition

Offering high deposition rates and being suitable for thin film fabrication, vacuum arc deposition (VAD) has been investigated extensively. However, macro-particles (MPs) emitted from the vacuum arc degrade the properties of the deposited samples and various types of magnetic filters have been proposed to mitigate macro-particle contamination. Unfortunately, the resulting deposition efficiency is inevitably compromised. In this work, we used a direct current (DC) based pulsed vacuum arc to deposit copper on a glass substrate. DC ensures continuous arc burning to achieve better stability, and the pulsed power provides high instantaneous and discontinuous energy that affects the generation of MPs. Four sets of experiments were done, and the relationship between the pulsing frequencies and MPs deposited on the substrate was studied. Our results show that the MPs tend to be smaller when the pulsing frequency increases, and the MP ratios vary with the pulsing frequencies in a different way than duty cycles. Several factors related to this phenomenon are discussed.