Magnetron sputtering for development of nanostructured materials

Nanostructured materials (NMs) represent an active area of research have provided significant breakthroughs in several practical applications in many application domains in nanoelectronics, photonics, and textile engineering according to intrinsically various unique properties. The technological importance of nanomaterials is due to their tunable physicochemical characteristics, such as optical absorption, electrical conductivity, and photothermal characteristics. This chapter has discussed about the basics of magnetron sputtering process. Here one can detect the current practices and market demand of magnetron sputtering. All the advantages and limitations associated with the sputtering process and the sputtered products have been discussed. Various magnetron sputtering techniques such as direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering processes, radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering, DC-RF magnetron sputtering, ion-beam magnetron sputtering, reactive sputtering, inductively coupled plasma-magnetron sputtering, microwave amplified magnetron sputtering, and high power impulse magnetron sputtering have been demonstrated. Formations of smart material thin film and nanocomposites have been discussed. A brief knowledge on various applications is given here.