Sputtring av Ti-Si-C-Ag-beläggningar från sammansatta sputterkällor

Abstract Today gold is used as contact material on electric contacts for low current applications. Gold, however, has low wear resistance, is expensive and environmentally stressful to produce. An alternative contact material to gold is nano composite Ti-Si-C-Ag deposited with DC-magnetron sputtering. Nano composite Ti-Si-C-Ag has so far been deposited by a compound Ti-Si-C sputter target with a separate Ag target.Today gold is used as contact material on electric contacts for low current applications. Gold, however, has low wear resistance, is expensive and environmentally stressful to produce. An alternative contact material to gold is nano composite Ti-Si-C-Ag deposited with DC-magnetron sputtering. Nano composite Ti-Si-C-Ag has so far been deposited by a compound Ti-Si-C sputter target with a separate Ag target. In this work films have been deposited by three different compound Ti-Si-C-Ag targets with three different carbon contents. The films have been deposited in two separate PVD systems: One conventional batch loaded and one sequential with a load-lock. The phaseand elemental composition of the films has been studied with XRD and EDX respectively. Thickness and microstructure have been analysed with SEM. Adhesion and resistivity have been analysed with Rockwell indentation and surface resistivity measurement with four point probe. Contact resistance has also been studied to a limited extent. The work shows that the increment of carbon content in the target yields more carbon rich films with larger titanium carbide crystallites. The resistivity is increasing due to an increased amorphous phase between the crystallites but the contact resistance is decreasing due to a more ductile film.