Plasma surface modification of aluminium alloy samples treated with argon discharge conditioning

Summary form only given. The study of change in surface properties of metals and their alloys under plasma processing has a wide range of applications. It affords range, flexibility, ease and accuracy of process control at low cost as compared to other techniques. All the applications of non-equilibrium plasmas involve processes like sputtering, etching, polymerization, surface modification, etc. It is expected for industries to get a final product with specific properties with high reliability and repeatability. Stainless steel is used to construct UHV chambers. Comparative study of outgassing rates shows that SS can be replaced by aluminium alloy for UHV chambers. Turbomolecular Pumping Unit evacuates discharge chamber of SS304 with various ports on it. A hollow cathode DC glow discharge in argon for different discharge pressures and for different discharge current densities, is used for treating chemically cleaned ASA6063 aluminium alloy samples, keeping all other parameters constant. The TMP unit evacuates the SS304 chamber to a base pressure 3/spl times/10/sup -7/ mbar. The processing gas argon is introduced through a leak valve and with the help of a throttling valve the pressure in the discharge chamber is adjusted to the operating pressure-10/sup -2/ mbar. The wall temperature and discharge time were the same in all treatments.