Our newly developed Rotating Magnetron Guns (Z-Guns™) have been specifically engineered for the demanding requirements of data storage media producers. Integration with a new system or retrofitting an existing system is facilitated by Dexter’s new design and control interface.
Our Z-Guns and magnet arrays can be optimized to produce a cathode capable of sputtering highly permeable materials such as Nickel, Iron and Cobalt; or, coupled to modules specifically designed for a given target material or customer application.
The magnetic films used in perpendicular media require a relatively thick soft underlayer (SUL) not found in films of longitudinal media. In order to minimize target changeover for this layer, our Z-Guns allow the end users and OEMs to run thicker targets up to and over 12mm depending on the SUL target material.
Our gun offers the industry’s highest sputter efficiency because our source to substrate distance has been optimized while maintaining deposition uniformity.
Our guns can also produce radial anisotropic magnetic films. The mechanics of our Z-Guns provide a more robust design that can withstand the strong magnetic attractive forces created between the magnetic target and the high flux density magnetron while providing the flexibility for quick repairs and magnetic field adjustments. Our Z-Gun meets these requirements.
In most applications, customers are trying to maximize target utilization and achieve optimum uniformity. Our gun is capable of achieving both, along with radial magnetic anisotropy and zero re-deposition.
The Z-Gun sputtering sources feature a unique “magnet array’ which is completely isolated from the cooling water to eliminate magnet deterioration and subsequent degradation of source performance. This design permits easy access to the internal magnetic component arrangement thus allowing quick changes to the magnet array.
The Z-Gun sputtering sources are sleek and compact.
They feature programmable, high torque, DC motor drives along with a touch screen user interface. Rotational speed, phase shifting between coincident magnetron pairs, and z-position can be programmed for specific targets and processes.
The program can maintain fixed set of variable routines or allow dynamic changes in the routines to optimize performance as target erosion changes critical system parameters. Magnetron synchronization is another feature that can be programmed by the user.
The evolution of this product has resulted in the most service friendly product of its kind on the market, thereby providing our customers with maximized ‘up time’ and frustration free maintenance.