Diagnostics of argon cluster ion beam for materials treatment

Abstract

The important parameters for materials surface processing by a gas cluster ions are the mass composition, total energy and energy per atom in the cluster, which depends on the ion beam charge state. The purpose of this work is an experimental characterization of argon cluster ion beam, based on an original time-of-flight technique. The mean sizes of the cluster ions obtained from the measured mass spectra are compared with the mean sizes of the primary neutral clusters. By analyzing the mass spectra at different electron ionization current, the average charge state of cluster ion beam is evaluated.