CHARACTERISTICS OF ABLATION PLASMA PRODUCED BY INTENSE, PULSED, ION-BEAM

Characteristics of ablation plasma produced by the irradiation of an intense, pulsed, ion beam on targets, which has been known to be very effective in preparing thin films and is known as ion-beam evaporation (IBE), have been investigated experimentally by time-of-flight of ion-flux density measured by biased ion collector (BIC). With ion-beam power density of approximately 10(9) W/cm2, the velocity and the kinetic energy of the ablation plasma were measured at various positions from the substrate using a titanium or aluminum target. An analytic solution derived from one-dimensional hydrodynamic expansion into a vacuum has been developed for the IBE process. Using such a model, it is possible to deduce the temperature in IBE from the signals of BICs. This method is also applicable to other intense pulsed energy sources such as lasers or electron beams.