Substrate effects in magnetron sputtering of CoCrTa/Cr films on flexible substrates.

Abstract The aim of this work is to investigate the influence of different substrate effects, when magnetron sputtering is used to sputter CoCrTa/Cr layers on different plastic (PET: polyethylene terephthalate) substrates, on kapton and on glass. Four substrate effects were investigated: the kind and thickness of the plastic, the shape of the substrate holder, the influence of a heat conducting glue during sputtering and the target–substrate distance. The best results were obtained using thin PET, with a target–substrate distance of 4 cm. This is due to an easier heat transfer using the thin substrate. A heat conducting glue stabilizes the sputter process. By using a cylindrical sample holder we studied the transformability of our sputter process to an industrial roll coater process. The magnetic parameters were almost constant over the whole sample. All films are characterized by hysteresis, remanence, X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy measurements.