Image via Wikipedia
Many semiconductors, solar panels, and other technological devices make use of thin films, which are integral components of semiconductor design. Thin films are simply thin layers of a material upon a substrate base, and they are usually created through physical vapor deposition processes such as sputtering.
Most sputtering processes begin in a vacuum chamber inside a sputtering system, a large machine designed to create thin films. A gas plasma–usually made from argon or another noble gas–is brought into the chamber, then a current source is introduced. Direct current (DC) and radio frequency (RF) are both sources used in various processes. These sources create electrons in the chamber, which bombard the atoms of the gas plasma, knocking away the electrons from the outer orbitals of these atoms. The result is a large amount of positively charged gas cations.
These cations are then directed toward the target material, which will ultimately become the thin film. Since the molecules are traveling at high speeds, when they contact the target material inside the chamber, they are able to knock away small particles of it, breaking the target into a thin spray. The particles then travel through the chamber to the substrate, the base which holds the developing thin film, and deposit themselves evenly across its surface.
Thin films created in this manner are used in a wide range of technologies. Currently, ferromagnetic compounds are being tested as thin films for memory storage in computer systems, while other thin films are being used for medications.
