Hollow Cathode Glow Discharge for Plasma Ion Implantation

Summary form only given. Hollow cathode glow discharge has been investigated and utilized in plasma ion implantation. In this mode, local plasma ion implantation can be performed. The hollow cathode glow discharge is sustained by a radio-frequency source and the discharge behavior is investigated in this work. Argon and nitrogen are utilized in the experiments. The inner diameter of the hollow cathode changes from 1 mm to 6 mm. The excitation power of the radio-frequency source varies from 100 W to 400 W and gas flow changes from 5 sccm to 40 sccm. The collector to obtain ion density is negatively biased to -100 V to -400 V in front of the hollow cathode. The experimental results demonstrate that the plasma density is much dependent on the inner diameter of the hollow cathode, excitation power, gas flow, etc. The collected ion current increases monotonically with the RF power and inner diameter of the cathode but not with the gas flow as observed in our work