In this paper, the influence of the sputtering technology (reactive gas partial pressure, magnetic field intensity) on the power supply parameters has been investigated. The reactive sputtering of aluminium target in Ar+O(2) atmosphere has been used as an example. The experiments have shown that the formation of the Al(2)O(3) layers can be observed by the parameter of the power supply. It allowed estimating the point at which the sputtered material surface was poisoned by the reactive compound i.e. distinguishing magnetron sputtering modes. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.