AST - Atomic Simulation Tool

The University of Virginia has developed a user-friendly personal computer-based atomic scale simulation code for designing and evaluating ion beam deposition systems. This work entails first defining an ion gun-target-substrate geometry, material system(s), and a chamber background pressure, and then modeling the ion-beam sputtering of metal atoms from the target, and computationally tracking the propagation of both the sputtered atoms and any energetic neutrals to a substrate. The output of the simulation consists of a spreadsheet that lists the thickness of the deposit, and structure dependent parameters of the flux at pre-selected points (pixels) over the substrate surface.

The performance of this simulation code is tested by physically measuring the uniformity of deposition on a substrate using an existing ion-beam deposition system. The software predicts film thickness, local deposition rate, incidence angle and incidence energy over the entire substrate surface as a function of the geometry of the substrate and the operational mode of the ion-beam gun. The simulation has been generalized to allow any substrate diameter to be evaluated, it includes additional parameters to be simulated (e.g. the shaper position and shape), and it allow the locations of the ion beam, the target, and the substrate in the chamber as well as the ion source grid aperture to be optimized. We have recently incorporated the results of detailed calculations of inert gas atom scattering, target texturing and high energy neutral reflection into our simulation package.

Inventor(s): Wadley, et al.

Type of Offer: Licensing



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