Indium tin oxide (ITO) films were deposited at a temperature below 50 by a low-voltage sputtering system. The sputtering voltage was fixed at 100 V and Ar, Kr, and Xe were used as the sputtering gases. Compared with the sputtering in Ar gas, the sputtering in Kr or Xe gas caused a significant suppression of crystallization of the deposited film and resulted in the formation of amorphous films. These films had much lower resistivities than the films deposited using Ar gas, since the Hall mobility of the films had a larger value. Typical Hall mobility and carrier density are 50 cm2/Vsec, and 51020 cm-3, respectively. This improvement was attributable to the reduction of high-energy particle bombardment to the film surface in the sputtering. These films are stable at a temperature below 150, and crystallization occurs at a temperature above 150.

The sputter-deposition process of TiO2 thin films was investigated. When an oxide target is used, high-rate deposition above 57 nm/min can be realized by sputtering under a condition of low oxygen gas content. Under this sputtering condition, a Ti rich surface layer is formed by selective sputtering of oxygen atoms, and a large amount of Ti atoms are sputtered from this layer. The deposition rate, however, decreases steeply as the oxygen gas content increases. This decrease can be explained as follows. When a sufficient amount of oxygen gas is supplied into the chamber during sputtering, the oxygen atoms which are missing from the target surface by selective sputtering are filled up immediately. This leads to a very low deposition rate of the film, because only oxygen atoms are sputtered from the target. Therefore, the suppression of the incidence of oxygen gas to the target surface and a sufficient of oxygen supply to the substrate are necessary to realize the high-rate deposition of stoichiometric TiO2 films. From this point of view, using an oxide target instead of a metal target is useful for realizing a stable high-rate deposition of the film, since the amount of oxygen gas introduced in to the sputtering chamber can be reduced significantly. In addition, it was confirmed that pulse sputtering method is a useful technique for the deposition of TiO2 thin films. Meanwhile, low-voltage sputtering technique was difficult to use for the film deposition because of its low deposition rate.

The damage to the organic layer of aluminum (III) bis(2-methyl-8-quninolinato)-4-phenylphenolate (BAlq) film was investigated on the basis of the change in photoluminescence (PL) intensity. To suppress the bombardment of the substrate with high-energy particles such as γ-electrons and negative oxygen ions, we used a facing-target sputtering (FTS) system. A marked reduction, however, of the PL intensity of the organic layer was still observed upon the deposition of an indium tin oxide (ITO) film on the organic film. To reduce this reduction, we proposed the insertion of a sector-shaped metal shield near the target electrode, and we showed its effectiveness in reducing the damage. This reduction of the damage is thought to be caused by the elimination of γ-electrons incident to the organic film surface escaping from the target area near the substrate side. We confirmed that high-energy electron bombardment leads to a significant reduction of PL intensity of the organic layer. This indicates that high-energy electrons incident to the organic film surface play a key role in the damage of the organic layer during the sputtering process.

In this paper, we proposed a new high-rate oblique deposition method using two sputtering sources to obtain SiO2 films for a liquid crystal alignment layer. One sputtering source that operates in a metal mode supplies Si atoms to a substrate, and the other source that operates in an oxide mode supplies oxygen radicals to a substrate. To reduce the gas pressure of a deposition chamber and make the two sputtering sources operate in different modes, the sputtering sources were separated from the deposition chamber with stainless meshes, and Ar and oxygen gases were introduced separately through the two sputtering sources, i.e., Ar gas was introduced through the Si supply source and oxygen gas was introduced through the oxygen radical source. When Ar gas of 30 sccm and oxygen gas of 4 sccm were introduced into the system, the gas pressure of the deposition chamber was maintained below 1.7 mTorr and the films deposited at an incidence angle of more than 70 showed an elongated inclined columnar structure. Under this condition, a deposition rate of 30 nm/min was realized even at an incidence angle above 70, where most of the Si atoms incident to the substrate were supplied by the Si supply source and the oxygen radical source supplied oxygen radicals and promoted the oxidation of the film.