| AVS 63rd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Advanced Surface Engineering | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session SE-TuP |
| Session: | Advanced Surface Engineering Poster Session |
| Presenter: | Siegfried Zoehrer, Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria |
| Authors: | S. Zoehrer, Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria A. Anders, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory R. Franz, Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Cathodic arc plasmas are utilized in industry to synthesize a wide variety of functional thin films and coatings. However, the plasma properties present during the deposition processes are not yet fully understood, in particular when composite cathodes are used.
For pulsed cathodic arc plasmas, it is known that the plasma properties like ion energies and ion charge states are time dependent, but the influence of the cathode composition is not much studied. We therefore recorded time-resolved ion energy distribution functions in vacuum arc plasmas from composite NbAl cathodes with the Nb/Al atomic ratios 75/25, 67/33 and 25/75, as well as from single-element Nb and Al cathodes. The mass and charge-state-resolved detection of ions was realized using a commercial mass-energy analyzer modified to allow us having a time resolution of 100 ns (Tanaka et al., 2015). Three dimensional data sets were obtained, where the intensity, that is proportional to the ion count rate, is displayed as a function of time and energy for Nb and Al ions with charge states up to 5+ and 4+, respectively.
Regardless of the cathode composition, the highest mean charge states and ion energies were observed in the beginning of the pulses. There is also a clear influence of the cathode composition. Namely, the fraction of higher ion charge states being significantly lower in the plasma from the composite compared to the single-element cathodes. The current results regarding the time dependence of the ion charge state and energy distributions represent a first step towards a comprehensive understanding of how the cathode composition is affecting the plasma properties.
Tanaka, K.; Han, L.; Zhou, X. & Anders, A. (2015), 'Adding high time resolution to charge-state-specific ion energy measurements for pulsed copper vacuum arc plasmas', Plasma Sources Science and Technology 24(4), 045010.