Ion Beam Deposition for Novel Thin Film Materials and Coatings

The Ion Beam Deposition (IBD) technique is not very widespread, but simple and very powerful methodic of thin film preparation, allowing to obtain high quality, smooth and very uniform films on big substrate areas (until 40 cm diameter), by target ablation with high energy particles in high vacuum. For the bombarding of the target is convenient to use the charged particles – ions of Ar, because they are easy to disperse in the electric field. Also, including neutralizing system, allow to obtain high-energy neutrals, irradiating the target, producing thin films from any kind of solid targets: from simple metals to complex conducting and non-conducting stoichiometric alloys. Thus, energy of condensing target particles is an average from several units to tens of eV. In the present contribution, we discuss the possibilities and advantages of IBD technology on application examples, including results of functional properties research of Ti, TiO2, SiO2 and Ag thin films for medicine applications, Ni, NiOx, Co and CoO single layers and structures for spintronics applications, and TiO2-SiO2, Ti-Zr-O-SiO2 multilayer structures for laser mirrors applications, produced by IBD system. Good structural, morphological quality (with roughness ~ 0.3 nm) and high uniformity on big areas along with right phase and stoichiometric state is demonstrated by convenient standard techniques for the structures prepared under the optimized growth conditions.