One of the most important trends in nanotechnologies is a fabrication of ultra-thin extended nanostructures - coatings (films) and textures with thickness within 1-100 nm. Such structures provide actually unique abilities. With their help it is possible to control physical properties of materials, for instance, to change electrical and magnetic characteristics, to reach more high strength and micro-hardness. Using multi-component and multi-layer coatings, it is possible to form nano-composite materials with wide range of functions.
The area of nanostructures’ application is very varied: electronics, optics, precise machinery, etc.
Action of accelerated charged particles’ beams onto target (substrate) is a general way of thin surface structures’ creation. Sputtering, evaporation, deposition, etching, polishing, and many other kinds of surface treatment and modification are being realized by the use of such beams.
Such way of surface structures forming may be achieved with help of different devices. Most of them (magnetrons, electron-beam evaporators, end-Hall and arc sources) are used to advantage in microtechnologies mainly for creation of structures with thickness of 1-10 (and more) microns. The reason of it is that the technology processes realized with help of above devices are being accompanied with arising of big number of local defects in forming structures. An influence of these defects on structure’s properties usually is leveled in relatively “thick” micron structure. For the nanostructure the defects sizes are comparable with structure’s thickness and it does not allow to form continuous extended nanostructures with required properties.
Gridded ion sources are the most perspective devices for nanotechnologies.
Gridded ion source created directed mono-energetic ion beam with low angles of divergence (1-10 degrees). It provides a possibility of independent control of ions’ energy in beam (from tens to thousand of electron-Volts) and ion beam current density (from units of microamperes to tens of milliamperes) during the process realization. Besides, in gridded ion sources due to varying grid shape, there is a possibility of forming ion beams with required beam profile, for instance, beams with wide uniformity zone, focused beams, etc. Ion beams created by gridded sources are extremely pure ones and include minimum number of foreign particles.
Due to their unique characteristics, the gridded ion sources allow to realize various kinds of surface treatment with strongly dosed and directed ion action and allow to create high-quality surface nanostructures.
The best instrument for nanotechnologies is the gridded ion sources.
