Repetitively pulsed vacuum arc ion and plasma sources and new methods of ion and ion-plasma treatment of materials.

A brief review is presented of the "Raduga 1-5" repetitively pulsed vacuum are ion sources. Their operating principles and functional ranges are described. The Raduga ion sources provide single-and multi-element implantation. These advantages are achieved by using not only pure single-element or mixed ion beams, but also pulsed beam sequences with controllable composition and energy of each ion species. Another feature of the ion sources is their ability to generate a sequence of ion beam and plasma stream pulses. Switching between ion implantation and plasma deposition can be done from pulse to pulse, within each pulse, or after accumulation of a required dose. "Raduga 5" ion and plasma source operates in a d.c. mode of plasma formation and repetitively pulsed mode of ion beam generation. A new simple and effective system for filtering a plasma flux from the microparticle fraction and the neutral component is described. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.