Optimization of a plasma focus device as an electron beam source for thin film deposition

Abstract

Electron beam emission characteristics from neon, argon, hydrogen and helium in an NX2 dense plasma focus (DPF) device were investigated in order to optimize the plasma focus device for deposition of thin films using energetic electron beams. A Rogowski coil and CCD based magnetic spectrometer were used to obtain temporal characteristics, total electron charge and energy distributions of electron emission from the NX2 DPF device. It is found that hydrogen should be the first choice for thin film deposition as it produces the highest electron beam charge and higher energy (from 50 to 200 keV) electrons. Neon is the next best choice as it gives the next highest electron beam charge with mid-energy (from 30 to 70 keV) electrons. The operation of NX2 with helium at voltages above 12 kV produces a mid-energy (from 30 to 70 keV) electron beam with low-electron beam charge, however, argon is not a good electron beam source for our NX2 DPF device. Preliminary results of the first ever thin film deposition using plasma focus assisted pulsed electron deposition using a hydrogen operated NX2 plasma focus device are presented.

Post-pinch generation of electron beam in a low energy Mather-type plasma focus device

“…The earlier studies on the low energy PF devices, similar to the device used in this paper, showed that the electron beam output has strong correlation with the general plasma dynamics Neog and Mohanty 2007;Zhang et al 2007). The correlation starts from the breakdown through the radial phase.…”

“…Due to a wide range of applications of high-energy, short-pulse electron beams in industry and medical sciences, such as lithography, micro-lithography, microscopy (Neff et al 1989;Lee et al 1997;Mohanty et al 2006), sterilization (Kotov andSokovnin 2000), and deposition of various thin films (Zhang et al 2005), studies have been undertaken to characterize the electron beam emission and its energy spectrum in dense PF devices. The produced X-ray radiation by the interaction of electrons with anode tip has been used indirectly to measure electron beam energy spectrum.…”

Role of charge particles irradiation on the deposition of AlN films using plasma focus device

“…The sausage instabilities are reported to result in acceleration of energetic ions (nitrogen ions in our case) and electrons. The energetic charged particle beams results in production of two different plasma species at two different places: (i) the instability accelerated relativistic electrons move downward towards the anode and ablate the anode top material (the ablation of anode top material is also aided by the interaction of hot dense plasma with [46] and (ii) the instability accelerated ions of filling gas species (nitrogen ions in present case), having very high energies ranging from tens of keV to MeV, can cause the transient melting and evaporation of substrate surface [47] (silicon oxide layer on silicon substrate in present case) resulting in the formation of plasma of substrate surface species (silicon and oxygen plasma species) near the substrate surface.…”

Preliminary Results of 1.5 kJ Mather-Type Plasma Focus with Stainless Steel Anode

“…During its early stages of development, the DPF has been used as a neutron source for pulse activation analysis [3], as a spectroscopic source for production of highly ionized species [4] and as a pump source for lasers [5]. The DPF device, however, not only is a source of neutrons but also emits highly energetic ions, relativistic electrons and abundant amount of X-rays [6][7][8].…”