Industrial process driven system requirements for PSII applications

Plasma Source Ion Implantation (PSII) is a room temperature, plasma-based surface enhancement technology which is being commercialized through the efforts of a group of companies. A number of issues are critical to the successful design and operation of a commercial PSII system. These include overall vacuum system design, plasma source requirements and plasma-target interaction considerations, pulsed, high voltage sub-system (typically referred to as modulator) requirements, and target requirements and limitations. Critical system components are outlined and overall system design will be briefly covered

Plasma source ion implantation research and applications at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Plasma Source Ion Implantation research at Los Alamos Laboratory includes direct investigation of the plasma and materials science involved in target surface modification, numerical simulations of the implantation process, and supporting hardware engineering. Target materials of Al, Cr, Cu-Zn, Mg, Ni, Si, Ti, W, and various Fe alloys have been processed using plasmas produced from Ar, NH{sub 3}, N{sub 2}, CH{sub 4}, and C{sub 2}H{sub 2} gases. Individual targets with surface areas as large as {approximately}4 m{sup 2}, or weighing up to 1200 kg, have been treated in the large LANL facility. In collaboration with General Motors and the University of Wisconsin, a process has been developed for application of hard, low friction, diamond-like-carbon layers on assemblies of automotive pistons. Numerical simulations have been performed using a 2{1/2}-D particle- in-cell code, which yields time-dependent implantation energy, dose, and angle of arrival for ions at the target surface for realistic geometries. Plasma source development activities include the investigation of pulsed, inductively coupled sources capable of generating highly dissociated N{sup +} with ion densities n{sub i} {approximately} 10{sup 11}/cm{sup 3}, at {approximately}100 W average input power. Cathodic arc sources have also been used to produce filtered metallic and C plasmas for implantation and deposition either in vacuum, or in conjunction with a background gas for production of highly adherent ceramic coatings

Adherent diamond like carbon coatings on metals via plasma source ion implantation

Various techniques are currently used to produce diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings on various materials. Many of these techniques use metallic interlayers, such as Ti or Si, to improve the adhesion of a DLC coating to a ferrous substrate. An alternative processing route would be to use plasma source ion implantation (PSII) to create a carbon composition gradient in the surface of the ferrous material to serve as the interface for a DLC coating. The need for interlayer deposition is eliminated by using a such a graded interfaces PSII approach has been used to form adherent DLC coatings on magnesium, aluminum, silicon, titanium, chromium, brass, nickel, and tungsten. A PSII process tailored to create a graded interface allows deposition of adherent DLC coatings even on metals that exhibit a positive heat of formation with carbon, such as magnesium, iron, brass and nickel