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Abstract

Planar or tubular sputtering targets made of a silver base alloy and at least one further alloy component selected from indium, tin, antimony, and bismuth accounting jointly for a weight fraction of 0.01 to 5.0% by weight are known. However, moving on to ever larger targets, spark discharges are evident and often lead to losses especially in the production of large and high-resolution displays having comparatively small pixels. For producing a sputtering target with a large surface area on the basis of a silver alloy of this type, which has a surface area of more than 0.3 m² as a planar sputtering target and has a length of at least 1.0 m as a tubular sputtering target, and in which the danger of spark discharges is reduced and thus a sputtering process with comparatively high power density is made feasible, the invention proposes that the silver base alloy has a crystalline structure with a mean grain size of less than 120 μm, an oxygen content of less than 50 wt.-ppm, a content of the impurity elements, aluminum, lithium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, barium, and chromium, each of less than 0.5 wt.-ppm, and a metallic purity of at least 99.99% by weight.

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First Claim