Study on the Preparation of Low Oxygen-content ZrB₂ Film by Magnetron Sputtering Method at Non-ultra-high Vacuum Condition

The preparation of easily oxidizable films by magnetron sputtering generally requires ultra-high background vacuum conditions.However,ultra-high vacuum conditions have problems of high cost or difficult implementation in large-area,large-scale coating engineering practice.A set of auxiliary Ti targets are added inside the magnetron sputtering coating chamber,and the affinity of Ti atoms sputtered from the Ti target to oxygen is used to consume the residual atmosphere in the coating chamber,especially the oxygen content,so as to achieve a similar super high background vacuum coating effect.Taking ZrB₂ thin film prepared by magnetron sputtering as the research object,the effects of auxiliary Titarget opening or not on the components,microstructure and properties of ZrB₂ thin films were compared.It was found that under the same process conditions,the O content in ZrB₂ film was reduced to 2.94 at.%from 24.77 at.%when the auxiliary Ti target was opened;Microstructure and performance results show that the ZrB₂ film with high O content without the Ti target is amorphous and the resistivity is 682 μΩ·cm,while the ZrB₂ film with low O content when the Ti target is turned on is polycrystalline,and the resistivity decreases to 348 μΩ·cm.