MINIATURE ELECTRON-BOMBARDMENT EVAPORATION SOURCE - EVAPORATION RATE MEASUREMENT

Miniature electron beam evaporation sources which operate on the princ iple of vaporization of source material, in the form of a tip, by elec tron bombardment are produced by several companies specialised in UHV equipment. These sources are used primarily for materials that are nor mally difficult to deposit due to their high evaporation temperature. They are appropriate for special applications, like heteroepitaxial th in films growth that require very low and well controlled deposition r ate. We propose a simple and easily applicable method of evaporation r ate control. The method is based on the measurement of ion current pro duced by electron bombardment of evaporated atoms. In order to be able to determine the ion current - evaporation flux calibration curves we measured the absolute values of evaporation flux by means of Bayard-A lpert ion gauge.