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In this work, we present a thorough study on the relation between the plasma emission and the change of the silicon nitride thin films refractive index. Thin films were grown by reactive magnetron direct current sputtering technique and deposited onto silicon wafers at different fluxes of Ar and N 2 and at different working pressures. This procedure, at certain deposition parameters, produced poor quality films, i.e. films with refractive index other than pure Si 3 N 4 films. The emission of the plasma was interrogated in real time by means of optical emission spectroscopy (OES) observing at the vicinity of the trget location. In addition, optical properties of the films were measured by in situ ellipsometricspectroscopy and then correlated with OES observations. Changes in the film refractive index could be deduced from changes in plasma emission applying a principal component analysis.

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Target poisoning in reactive sputtering is one of the biggest problems in the coatings industry. In this work, we use the co-sputtering simulation reactive mode software, Co-SS Rm, to present a different solution of the compound formation both on the target and on the substrate, based on the comparison of the simulations with the thickness measurements of the films deposited at different flows of reactive gas. In these simulations, the spatial distribution of the deposited thin films is determined by analysing the angular distribution of the atoms and/ or compound ejected from the target, as well as its sputtering yield. Results indicate that the target surface poisoning suffers an evolution ejecting metallic atoms and silicon oxide until the whole racetrack area is covered by silicon oxide, but at the same time, there is a reduction in the racetrack area due to the growth of several monolayers of silicon oxide. Spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis showed the formation of SiO 2 in the thin films in almost all the reactive gas flows. Simulation results were validated by thickness measurements of actual thin films and plasma optical emission spectroscopy by analysing emission transitions from the target species (Si).