Production of thin epitaxial films using ion beam deposition

An ion beam deposition system to produce isotopically pure epitaxial thin films of different materials has been designed and built. Using negative ions, problems due to mass interference with molecular ions could be significantly reduced, thus allowing the production, for instance, of Si-29 films of high purity. By including thermal processing and different analytical facilities to this system, in-situ studies of atomic transport as well as atomic exchange processes can be studied directly.