Plasma immersion ion implantation experiments at the Instituto Nacional dePesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Brazil

Historical perspective of the development of PIII devices at the Institute Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) is given, together with the descript ion of the present system under operation and our overall results on this t hree-dimensional implantation research. Starting with an ignitron switched pulser (1 pulse per 3 min) and an intermittent microwave plasma, we improve d our PIII system developing a pulse forming network (PFN) based pulser (20 Hz), 2 years later. We also improved our plasma source towards a DC, highl y stable, medium density glow discharge system. A much faster hard tube pul ser was recently incorporated to our PIII system (670 Hz) allowing us to ac hieve good implantation results in different materials. Presently, we are t esting a recently purchased RUP-4 commercial pulser to obtain are prevented , 1.1 kHz, square pulses for new experiments in this active field of PIII r esearch. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. AU rights reserved.