Study of Heat Flow at Substrate during Sputtering of Copper–Titanium Sandwich Target

The purpose of this work is to study the kinetics of the heat flow heating the substrate, which is generated by a two-layer sandwich magnetron target when sputtered in argon. Its novelty resides in the application of the COMSOL Multiphysics to study the kinetics of thermal processes during sputtering of a target of the new type. The analysis was performed for a sandwich target with internal copper and external titanium plates when the discharge power varied in the range of 400–1200 W. The heating of the external target plate is described by a two-dimensional homogeneous Fourier equation. The solution to the equation reveals how the kinetics of the external plate's surface temperature distribution depends on the discharge power. To study the heat flow heating the substrate, the external plate is presented in the form of an additive set of small-sized surface heat sources. Previously unknown features of the thermal process are established. It is shown that numerical modeling adequately describes the experimental results.