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Pulsed magnetron sputtering (PMS) has become established as the process of choice for the deposition of dielectric materials for many applications. The process is attractive because it offers stable arc free operating conditions during the deposition of, for example, functional films on architectural and automotive glass, or antireflective/antistatic coatings on displays. Recent studies have shown that pulsing the magnetron discharge also leads to hotter and more energetic plasmas in comparison with continuous dc discharges, with increased ion energy fluxes delivered to the substrate. As such, the PMS process offers benefits in the deposition of a wide range of materials. The present paper describes three examples where PMS has led to either significant enhancement in film properties or enhanced process flexibility: in low friction titanium nitride coatings, in Al doped zinc oxide transparent conductive oxide coatings sputtered directly from powder targets and in thin film photovoltaic devices based on copper (indium/gallium) diselenide. These examples demonstrate the versatility of PMS and open up new opportunities for the production of advanced coatings using this technique.SE/499The authors are in the School of Computing Science and Engineering, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, UK (p.Kelly@salford.ac.uk). Based on a presentation at the meeting on 'Pulsed plasma processing' held at Salford

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This paper reports the production of high quality copper indium diselenide thin films using pulsed DC magnetron sputtering from a powder target. As grown thin films consisted of pinhole free, densely packed grains. X ray diffraction showed that films were highly orientated in the (112) and/or (204)/(220) direction with no secondary phases present. The most surprising and exciting outcome of this study was that the as-grown films were of near stoichiometric composition, almost independent of the composition of the starting material.No additional steps or substrate heating were necessary to incorporate selenium and create single phase CuInSe 2 . Electrical properties obtained by hot point probe and four point probe gave values of low resistivity and showed that the films were all p type. The physical and structural properties of these films were analyzed using x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Resistivity measurements were carried out using the four point probe and hot probe methods. The single step deposition process can cut down the cost of the complex multi step processes involved in the traditional vacuum based deposition techniques. KeywordsCuInSe 2 thin films, pulsed DC magnetron sputtering, stoichiometric CuInSe 2 films, photovoltaic, solar cells, single step CuInSe 2 films.