Silicon Carbide thin films deposited with PVD techniques with a stoichiometry Si:C close to 1:1

Silicon carbide (SiC) is an attractive material for EUV and soft X-ray optics. CVD-deposited SiC is the best reflective material in the whole EUV interval. Despite of this, SiC thin films deposited with PVD techniques, such as magnetron sputtering with amorphous structure, do not have the same performances undergoing to a degradation with time, probably because of the stoichiometry. Depositing stable SiC with PVD techniques is crucial in building ML’s, like Si/SiC and SiC/Mg for soft X-ray applications (such space telescope). We deposited some preliminary samples using the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) and the Pulsed Electron Deposition (PED) techniques achieving a good reflectance in the whole EUV range (27% at 10° of incidence at 121.6 nn) on a silicon substrate.The higher energy involved in these deposition processes could lead to a film with a stoichiometry much closer to the target one. A good target is still a challenge since commercial SiC sintered target are usually not stoichiometric. The reflectivity of the deposited films have been measured at LUXOR laboratory (University of Padova, Italy) and at the BEAR beamline of the ELETTRA synchrotron in Trieste (Italy).