There is a desire to create highly ionized metal fluxes by utilizing a extremely high-density plasma, facilitating near ideal IPVD required in filling narrow trenches of 32nm or less – realizing performance required for next generation of chips, produced using EUV(13.5nm) light.

A variety of plasma diagnostics can be used to study the detailed influence of parameter variation on the plasmas used for PVD and PECVD on a commercial 200mm INOVA high power (32 kW) hollow cathode magnetron deposition tool. Because of the intense deposition plasma conditions, non-standard geometry, and some non-standard frequencies used, specifically designed diagnostics are preferable to commercial solutions. These diagnostics include a 3-D scanning Langmuir probe, with analysis for magnetized plasmas to find the electron temperature and density. A self-cleaning in-situ plasma cup is being designed. To find the deposition rates and ionization fraction of the incident metal atom species a quartz crystal microbalance combined with electrostatic and magnetostatic filters will be implemented which will allow calculations of ionization fraction and system efficiency.