Other Technologies for Sputter Deposition of ZnO

The various magnetron sputter processes described above utilize the same plasma process for sputtering and for activating film growth on the substrate. There are also other techniques available, which permit a certain separation of sputtering and film growth activation. 

Combining an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma with a sputtering process is another option to seperate sputtering and plasma activation. It has been shown to be an attractive technique for the deposition of dielectric ZnO films [101]. 

The combination of magnetron sputtering and inductively coupled plasma excitation (ICP) is a technique which allows enhanced ionization of the sputtered material. The combination of transition mode process control of the reactive sputtering and ICP plasma excitation is described in [112]. However, the resistivity of ZnO Al films sputtered from a Zn 1.5 wt% A1 target is in the of 1,000 gH cm at T = 150 °C, which is inferior to results from conventional sputter processes under similar conditions. 

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