Versatile facility for hybrid plasma based ion implantation - deposition

Plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) was proposed in 1980s. Since then the techniques related to PIII, such as plasma ion implantation-nitriding, plasma based IBAD using vacuum arcs or magnetron sputtering, etc have gradually been investigated and utilized to achieve more superior surface properties. In this paper a !newly developed facility designed by our group is presented. Several plasma sources and technologies are integrated and performed in one facility to achieve more flexible processes. The facility is equipped with rf plasma source, hot filament glow-discharge plasma sources to produce required plasmas. Two magnetron sputtering systems are installed for plasma based IBAD while two vacuum arcs with one curve-filtered and the other linearly-filtered are utilized to achieve metallic ion implantation and deposition. The MEWA source is installed on the side wall of the vacuum chamber with an acceleration voltage of 50 kV. A low-energy gaseous ion source with focus beam or parallel beam is also utilized to perform BAD. The central target holder may be rotated and it may be usually biased negatively to high-voltage (<40kV) and 1ow:voltage (<2kV) in practical applications. The details of the facility and operation behavior will be described in this paper.