Review Article: Tracing the recorded history of thin-film sputter deposition: From the 1800s to 2017

By J. Greene. 2017

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Thin films, ubiquitous in today's world, have a documented history of more than 5000 years. However, thin-film growth by sputter deposition, which required the development of vacuum pumps and electrical power in the 1600s and the 1700s, is a much more recent phenomenon. First reported in the early 1800s, sputter deposition already dominated the optical-coating market by 1880. Preferential sputtering of alloys, sputtering of liquids, multitarget sputtering, and optical spectroscopy for process characterization were all described in the 1800s. Measurements of threshold energies and yields were carried out in the late 1800s, and yields in reasonable agreement with modern data were reported in the 1930s. Roll-to-roll sputter coating on flexible substrates was introduced in the mid-1930s, and the initial demonstration of sustained self-sputtering (i.e., sputtering without gas) was performed in 1970. The term magnetron dates to 1921, and the results of the first magnetron sputtering experiments were published i...

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a6fa430af97b55e378cc9318beef9092a3e23c65