A toroidal plasma source for thin film deposition

Summary form only given. A toroidal deposition device is being constructed which will operate in a steady state mode with a low toroidal DC magnetic field (/spl sim/500 gauss) and low plasma current (500 A at 5 kHz), and which will generate a low plasma temperature (/spl sim/2 eV), high density (/spl sim/10/sup 19/m/sup -3/), fully ionized plasma. A biased substrate located near the plasma edge will draw an ion saturation current of up to several A/cm/sup 2/; most other kinds of plasma deposition sources are limited to equivalent deposition currents of 10-100 mA/cm/sup 2/ from partially or weakly ionized plasmas. The toroidal deposition sources will therefore open a new parameter range for basic studies of thin film deposition with a wide range of possible ion species including metal ions. Preliminary results have been obtained from the Sydney University pulsed Tokamak, TORTUS, as used for materials synthesis.