Fundamental aspects in non-reactive and reactive magnetron discharges

In this paper, which deals with physical processes and problems that are involved in magnetron discharges used for the deposition of thin films and material coatings, we emphasize the aspects connected to discharge physics: energy deposition, behaviour of the discharge in reactive gases in connection with plasma-surface interactions. We also present recent works on ionized physical vapour deposition (IPVD) in which the usual PVD magnetron sputtering is assisted by an additional discharge in order to ionize the sputtered neutral vapour and to achieve a better control and quality of the deposited material in industrial applications. We restrict ourselves to planar magnetrons.