AbstractA novel rectilinear negative carbon ion beam source for large-area coatings has been developed, based on SKION's Solid State Ion Beam Technology. The negative carbon ion beam is effectively produced by a primary cesium ion bombardment and the secondary negative carbon ion yield has been observed to be about 0.5. The ion source produces a negative carbon ion current density of 0.25 mA/cm2 at the extraction voltage of 4 kV. The ion beam energy can be independently controlled from 0 eV to 300 eV. Due to the rectilinear geometry for the production of ion beams, the scale-up of the ion beam in length direction can be easily obtained with no limit. Furthermore, the ion source uses no gas discharge to generate ion beams and does not use any hydrogen gas. The ion source can be operated in a high vacuum (<10-7 Torr), and the cesium vapors are filtered and recirculated. The ion source produces ultra-hard (50 GPa), atomically smooth (< 1 nm Ra), and hydrogen-free amorphous diamond-like-carbon (DLC) films over large areas.
