Development of Y-Shaped Filtered-Arc-Deposition System for Preparing Multielement Composition-Controlled Film

In recent years, multielement films have been required for high-performance cutting tools. In this paper, a Y-shaped filtered-arc-deposition (Y-FAD) system with two vacuum-arc sources was developed. First, an optimum magnetic coil arrangement was experimentally established to transport two plasma beams through the Y-shaped duct at the same time. Since the two plasma beams have the same electrical polarity, they naturally tend to repel each other. Therefore, in the second step, the two plasma beams were combined into one plasma beam through a mixer part by vibrating the plasma beams with a laterally oscillating magnetic field. Third, the electrical bias applied to the duct was optimized to obtain a higher transportation rate of plasma and deposition rate. After these design developments and tuning, titanium-aluminum (Ti-Al) film with a combined deposition pattern was finally obtained with Al and Ti cathodes. The controllability of the composition ratio by the arc current was verified.