Modeling reactive sputter deposition of titanium nitride in a triode magnetron sputtering system

In this paper, the so-called Bergʹs model was successfully employed in order to model the reactive sputter deposition of titanium nitride (TiN) by a triode magnetron sputtering (TMS) system. Such system consists of a grounded grid introduced between the target and the substrate. The grid acts as the anode, and the glow discharge is formed between the target and grid. The qualitative model was compared to experimental data. In addition, results from a conventional MS system were also compared to the ones from the modified TMS system. It was possible to observe that (a) the width of the hysteresis region is narrower for TMS for all modeled conditions; (b) the hysteresis width increases as a function of grid-to-target distance.