Abstract
Cathode spot motion influences the physical characteristics of arc plasma and the related macroparticles (MPs) in resultant films; these MPs limit the application of arc ion plating (AIP). In this paper, a scanning radial magnetic field (SRMF) was applied to the cathode surface to control the cathode spot motion and reduce the MP contamination in the deposited films. It was shown that film surface morphologies prepared using SRMF were better than those using a static radial magnetic field (RMF). The improvement was greater with increased scanning range and frequency. Using SRMF, cathode spot motion was confined to a spiral trajectory on the cathode surface and the spots moved over a large area and at a fast-moving velocity. Both the large moving area and the fast velocity decreased the temperature on the cathode surface and thus reduced the emission of the MPs.
Highlights
Arc ion plating (AIP) has been widely utilized to deposit various kinds of hard and functional films [1,2,3]
The scanning radial magnetic field (SRMF) in this configuration was produced by periodically changing the coil current
Because of the configuration of the RMF, the radial magnetic field BT was BT was parallel to the cathode surface
Summary
Arc ion plating (AIP) has been widely utilized to deposit various kinds of hard and functional films [1,2,3]. The high current density in the cathode spot brings AIP some advantages, such as high ionization rate, high particle energy and good film-matrix adhesion [4,5]. It causes some problems, in particular macroparticle (MP) contamination in deposited films. The first is to magnetically filter the MPs from the plasma during transport [7,8] While this method can effectively eliminate MP contamination, it greatly decreases deposition rate and dramatically increases coating costs [9,10,11]
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