Thin Zirconium, Niobium, Titanium and Silicon films as well as their corresponding oxides have been deposited in a commercially available sputter coating equipment. Circular planar DC magnetrons with 14 cm diameter targets have been used. The substrates were placed on a turning table of 50 cm diameter, rotating at 46 rpm. During every cycle half of a metallic mono layer was deposited; the total thickness was about 100 nm. The oxide films were obtained by oxidizing these metallic semi-layers separately in an oxygen plasma.

Film stresses were measured as a function of the Argon pressure ranging between 0.2 and 0.9 Pa. At low deposition pressure all the evaluated materials are in a compressive stress state. At high pressure, almost all layers, except Silicon and its oxide and Niobium oxide, present tensile stress. The transition pressure depends on the atomic mass ratio of the target material and the working gas and for the pure metals it correspond to values reported in the literature.

The compressive stress for the oxides deposited at low pressure is reduced compared to the non oxidized materials. This is due to the increased thickness from the oxidation. At high pressure the opposite effect is seen. As the layers are more porous, or less packed, oxygen is incorporated in the film and creates more compressive stress which reduces the tensile stress.

More details concerning the correlation between intrinsic material parameters and the measured film stresses will be given.