Deposition of Tungsten Thin Films by Magnetron Sputtering for Large-Scale Production of Tungsten-Based Transition-Edge Sensors

To cope with the foreseen demand for tungsten-based TESs in the current and future phases of the CRESST experiment, we investigated the possibility to implement a reliable, simple and reproducible fabrication method using sputtering. In this contribution, we present the method under development for tungsten deposition using conventional magnetron sputtering with xenon as sputtering gas. TESs with transition temperatures ( T_c ) down to 15 mK have been obtained with transition widths smaller than 1 mK. We also give a first assessment on the reproducibility of the process and present the potential for tuning of the T_c .