Plasma source ion implantation dose uniformity of a 2×2 array of spherical targets

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Abstract
We have employed Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry to characterize the ion implantation dose uniformity which can be achieved with plasma source ion implantation (PSII), a non‐line‐of‐sight technique for ion implantation of nonplanar targets in nonsemiconductor applications. In order to characterize the dose uniformity achievable with PSII, four spherical Ti‐6Al‐4V targets were PSII implanted simultaneously as a 2×2 square array in a nitrogen plasma with density 3×109 cm−3 at an energy of 50 keV to a nominal dose of 3×1017 atoms/cm2. The measured root‐mean‐square variation of both the retained dose and the mean range was found to be less than 15%, which is well within the acceptable tolerance range for nonsemiconductor applications of ion implantation. Our results demonstrate that PSII can achieve acceptable dose uniformity on nonplanar targets without target manipulation, and that such uniformity can be achieved in a batch processing mode.