eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Title: Influence of argon and oxygen on charge-state-resolved ion energy distributions of filtered aluminum arcs Author: Rosen, Johanna Anders, Andre Mraz, Stanislav Atiser, Adil Schneider, Jochen M. Publication Date: 03-23-2006 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/54v4s193 Keywords: cathodic vacuum arcs, ion charge states, aluminum, argon, oxygen Abstract: The charge-state-resolved ion energy distributions (IEDs) in filtered aluminum vacuum arc plasmas were measured and analyzed at different oxygen and argon pressures in the range 0.5 8.0 mTorr. A significant reduction of the ion energy was detected as the pressure was increased, most pronounced in an argon environment and for the higher charge states. The corresponding average charge state decreased from 1.87 to 1.0 with increasing pressure. The IEDs of all metal ions in oxygen were fitted with shifted Maxwellian distributions. The results show that it is possible to obtain a plasma composition with a narrow charge-state distribution as well as a narrow IED. These data may enable tailoring thin-film properties through selecting growth conditions that are characterized by predefined charge state and energy distributions. Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse