Filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition of copper thin film

Copper thin films with low electrical resistivity were successfully deposited using a filtered cathodic vacuum arc technique at room temperature. It was found that there is a critical film thickness of approximately 135 nm, above which the resistivity has an almost unchanged value of 1.8 μΩ cm. Below the critical thickness, the resistivity increases with decreasing thickness and is correlated with the copper grain size measured by AFM and X-ray diffraction.