The effect of base pressure and manganese oxidation on preparation of Mn3O4 and higher manganese silicide

In the process of preparing higher manganese silicide (HMS) by magnetron sputtering method, the sputtering base pressure is often a neglected parameter, manganese oxidation is a very difficult problem to avoid. Based on these situations, this paper takes sputtering base pressure as a variable and uses naturally oxidized manganese target as raw material to prepare samples with optimal experimental parameters of HMS, studied the impact of manganese oxidation on the preparation of HMS. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to characterize and analyze the obtained films. It is found that Mn3O4 could be well prepared by MnO and MnO2 on silicon substrate by the same preparation technology to prepare HMS, while control the base pressure higher than 7 × 10−5 Pa. The MnO existence will not cause a negative impact to the production of HMS, but MnO2 should be avoided in any process. When MnO and MnO2 exist at the same time, the sputtering base pressure range of 4 × 10−3–8 × 10−4 Pa should be avoided. The base pressure additionally has a strong regulate effect on the grain size of Mn3O4.