“…A wide range of interacting factors influence magnetron deposition of thin films. These include gas composition (Bose et al ., 2018; Ţălu et al ., 2018), flow rate/pressure (Ma et al ., 2019; Lee et al ., 2020; Shakoury et al ., 2020), deposition time (Dallaeva et al ., 2012; Ma et al ., 2019; Lee et al ., 2020), deposition rate (Taheriniya et al ., 2018), power (Ma et al ., 2019; Lee et al ., 2020), distance of substrate from target (Sangwaranatee et al ., 2018), substrate temperature (C. Taheriniya et al ., 2018; Ma et al ., 2019; Rajabi Kalvani et al ., 2019) and the target fabrication process (Wu et al ., 2012, 2019; Liu et al ., 2020). Since the target itself is one of the key factors contributing to the microstructure of the substrate, the evaluation of plasma–microstructure is key to not only better understanding the process but also to allow for optimisation (Dallaeva et al ., 2012; Wu et al ., 2019; Chen et al ., 2020).…”