Enhancement mechanism of H^- production and suitable configurations for materials processing in a magnetized sheet plasma

Abstract

A magnetized sheet plasma ion source was developed for steady state high density plasma with strong density and high temperature gradients. This feature provides efficient formation of negative hydrogen (H -) ions over a wide beam extraction area through the electron volume process. A hexapole confinement at the cathode, addition of argon and magnesium seeding led to the increase of H -yield. The device configuration is suitable for plasma based materials processing namely, synthesis of TiN, SiH, SnO2, and the formation of advanced MAX phase materials Ti2AlC, Ti2CdC and NbAlC.