Application of intense pulsed ion beam to materials processes

Intense pulsed ion beams (PIB) are expected to be applied to material processes since they have unique features. To apply the PIB to materials processing two types of beam sources are considered, i.e. plasma focus (PF) and pulsed power ion diode. In the PF experiment Mather type electrode was used with a capacitor bank of 43.2 μF. When PF was pre-filled with H₂ (250 Pa), ion current density (J_i) of 0.65 kA/cm₂ was obtained at 40 cm downstream from the anode top. From the Thomson parabola spectrometer (TPS) measurement, protons of energy in the range of 0.1-1 MeV were observed. For the case of using mixture of H₂ (180 Pa) and N₂ (20 Pa), J_i was 1.1 kA/cm² and by the TPS protons and variety of nitrogen ions (N^(1-5+)) of energy in the range of 0.4-6 MeV were observed. In the development of pulsed power ion diode, gas puff plasma gun is used as an ion source to produce nitrogen ion beam. In the preliminary experiment Ji of 1 A/cm² was obtained. We are now evaluating the characteristics of the ion diode and the accelerated ion beam. To evaluate the irradiation effect on materials, amorphous silicon films were irradiated by the ion beam produced by PF and we see that amorphous silicon layers are crystallized.