Patent ID: 7556718

Claim:
An ionized physical deposition method comprising: sealing a substrate within a chamber of a processing apparatus; performing a deposition-etch process to deposit a film of material from a sputtering target on surfaces of high aspect ratio submicron features on the substrate; while performing the deposition-etch process, sweeping around a sputtering surface of the sputtering target a magnetic field that produces plasma confinement over the sputtering surface with relatively higher plasma confinement over only a portion of the sputtering surface of the sputtering target, the sweeping of the magnetic field being achieved by rotating a magnet assembly having magnets moveably mounted thereon about an axis of the sputtering target; and while sweeping the magnetic field around the sputtering surface, varying parameters of the magnetic field by changing the position of one or more magnets relative to the assembly as the assembly rotates about the axis so that the magnetic field changes with the angular position of the rotating magnet assembly; the changing of the position of the one or more magnets as the assembly rotates being controlled such that the target is sputtered non-uniformly in a way that compensates for at least some azimuthal non-uniformities on the substrate in the deposition-etch process so as to improve overall azimuthal uniformity of the process around the substrate.