Gas scattering effects and microstructural evaluation of electron beam evaporated titanium coatings in neon and argon at different gas pressures

Titanium coatings were deposited on stainless steel and glass substrates by electron beam evaporation in vacuum (4 x 10(-4) Pa) and at different neon and argon gas pressures (from 0.33 to 2.00 Pa). The effect of background gas pressure and type on film microstructure was evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Since it was not feasible to maintain a constant evaporation rate for all runs, the 'deposition efficacy', a parameter defined as the ratio between coating thickness and mass of material evaporated, was statistically modelled using non-linear regression analysis to deter-mine the effects of gas scattering. The results revealed that neon and argon promote similar scattering of the titanium vapour and this may point to a lower likelihood of gas-phase metal cluster formation in neon. The coating microstructure was found to change from a tapered grain structure, obtained under vacuum conditions, to a faceted one at low gas pressure (0.33 Pa), becoming more porous as gas pressure increased. For a given gas pressure, no significant differences could be observed in coating microstructure between the use of argon or neon. These findings may be significant when considering the use of neon as an alternative gas to argon, for improving reactive gas ionisation (through Penning mechanisms) in Plasma-Assisted Physical Vapour Deposition. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.