Pulsed ion-beam evaporation for thin film deposition

The process of pulsed ion-beam evaporation was studied by investigating its three important parts: target ablation, plasma expansion, and thin-film deposition. The diagnostic results have shown that the target mass loss caused by ion beam ablation mainly depends on the melting and boiling temperatures of the target materials. In addition, high-speed photographs have shown that the expansion of the ablation plasma is well directional. The result of the thin-film composition analysis has indicated that the ablation plasma moved along the substrate surface during the thin film deposition.