Historical milestones and future prospects of cluster ion beam technology

Development of technology for processing of surfaces by means of gas cluster ion beams began only about a quarter century ago even though fundamental research related to generation of gas clusters began much earlier. Industrial applications of cluster ion beams did not start to be explored until commercial equipment was first introduced to the ion beam community in around 2000. The technology is now evolving rapidly with industrial equipment being engineered for many diverse surface processing applications which are made possible by the unique characteristics of cluster-ion/solid-surface interactions. In this paper, important historical milestones in cluster ion beam development are described. Present activities related to a wide range of industrial applications in semiconductors, magnetic and optical devices, and bio-medical devices are reviewed. Several emerging new advances in cluster beam applications for the future are also discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.