Solid State Cesium Ion Beam Sputter Deposition

The solid state cesium ion source os alumino-silicate based zeolite which contains cerium. The material is an ionic conductor. Cesiums are stably stored in the material and one can extract the cesiums by applying electric field across the electrolyte. Cesium ion bombardment has the unique property of producing high negative ion yield. This ion source is used as the primary source for the production of a negative ion without any gas discharge or the need for a carrier gas. The deposition of materials as an ionic species in the energy range of 1.0 to 300eV is recently recognized as a very promising new thin film technique. This energetic non-thermal equilibrium deposition process produces films by “Kinetic Bonding / Energetic Condensation" mechansim not governed by the common place thermo-mechanical reaction. Under these highly non-equilibrium conditions meta-stable materials are realized and the negative ion is considered to be an optimum paeticle or tool for the purpose. This process differs fundamentally from the conventional ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) technique such that the ion beam energy transfer to the deposition process is directly coupled the process. Since cesium ion beam sputter deposition process is forming materials with high kinetic energy of metal ion beams, the process provider following unique advantages:(1) to synthesize non thermal-equilibrium materials, (2) to form materials at lower processing temperature than used for conventional chemical of physical vapor deposition, (3) to deposit very uniform, dense, and good adhesive films (4) to make higher doposition rate, (5) to control the ion flux and ion energy independently. Solid state cesium ion beam sputter deposition system has been developed. This source is capable of producing variety of metal ion beams such as C, Si, W, Ta, Mo, Al, Au, Ag, Cr etc. Using this deposition system, several researches have been performed. (1) To produce superior quality amorphous diamond films (2) to produce carbon nitirde hard coatings(Carbon nitride is a new material whose hardness is comparable to the diamond and also has a very high thermal stability.) (3) to produce cesiated amorphous diamond thin film coated Si surface exhibiting negative electron affinity characteristics. In this presentation, the principles of solid state cesium ion beam sputter deposition and several applications of negative metal ion source will be introduced.