Unleashing the Power of Hiden EQP Series for Titanium Nitride Deposition using HiPIMS
In today’s highly competitive market, industries are constantly seeking advanced coating techniques to enhance the performance of their products. One such technique is High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS), a cutting-edge method used to deposit ultra-hard materials like titanium nitride (TiN). Hiden Analytical’s EQP Series offers an innovative solution for analyzing HiPIMS plasmas, providing insights into plasma species, mass, and energy to optimize the deposition process. In this blog, we’ll delve into the benefits of HiPIMS, the role of the Hiden EQP Series in analyzing HiPIMS plasmas, and its applications in Titanium Nitride coatings.Harnessing the Benefits of HiPIMS for Titanium Nitride Coatings
HiPIMS offers numerous advantages over traditional sputtering techniques, including higher ionization rates, improved surface density, reduced friction, and lower substrate temperatures. These benefits make it an ideal method for depositing ultra-hard materials like titanium nitride. TiN coatings offer increased hardness and wear resistance, making them suitable for dimensionally sensitive components such as fasteners, cutting tools, and gears.Mass Resolved Ion Spectra with Hiden EQP Series
The Hiden EQP Series is a powerful tool for analyzing HiPIMS plasmas, providing mass and energy resolved spectra of plasma species. This allows researchers to directly monitor the deposition process and correlate changes in parameters such as pressure, gas composition, plasma power, and duty cycle with the resulting film properties. A typical mass spectrum from a titanium nitride HiPIMS plasma can reveal nitrogen, titanium, and argon isotopes, as well as their respective compounds.
Time averaged mass spectrum from a titanium nitride HiPIMS plasma.
Analyzing Energy Resolved Spectra in HiPIMS Deposition Plasmas
Conventional mass spectrometry techniques often struggle to analyze transient events in HiPIMS plasmas due to their rapid occurrence. However, the Hiden EQP Series can be equipped with a multichannel scaler (MCS) detector, enabling mass and energy spectra measurements with time resolutions as low as 50 ns. By synchronizing the MCS detector with the plasma pulse, researchers can study plasma ignition, extinction, and afterglow events in detail.
Ion energy distribution of argon ions with respect to time after the onset of a plasma pulse.
