High deposition rate of amorphous carbon film using a magnetically driven shunting arc discharge

A carbon shunting arc discharge as a pulsed plasma source has been utilized in the preparation of amorphous carbon film. In order to improve the deposition rate on a substrate set nearby the plasma source, a plasma is driven by a magnetically induced force, i.e., the Lorentz force. The plasma was driven along the rail-type electrodes toward the target to deposit thin films. This system has been well known as “railgun”, as one of the typical pulsed power technologies, but this is the first case that applied the shunting arc discharge. A carbon rod with a diameter of 2 mm and a length of 40 mm was used for the arc generation, and the plasma was driven along a pair of holders with an effective length of 60 mm. The plasma was generated by releasing the energy stored in a capacitor bank with a capacitance of 20 μF. The arc was driven for an arc duration of 30 μs. The current is a half-cycle sinusoid, of which the peak current is 1.7 kA for a charging voltage of 1 kV. A deposition rate of 100 nm/min was obtained when the pulsed arc was generated at a repetition rate of 8 Hz. The deposition rate correlated with the number of shots of the pulsed shunting arc discharge.