Formation of cubic boron nitride thin films by reactive cathodic arc evaporation

Cathodic Arc Deposition of Films

“…However, an important advance made recently by Richter and coworkers is that they have made and operated a cathodic arc source with a boron cathode operating at about 1000 • C, i.e. when boron becomes a good conductor (as described above) (95)(96)(97). Films were made that were almost 100% cubic phase, of quality comparable to the best films made by other methods such as magnetron sputtering.…”

“…Richter and coworkers have made an important advance in demonstrating that boron plasma can be formed by the cathodic arc process using a hot boron cathode (95)(96)(97). The cathode was heated up to about 1000 • C by a surrounding oven, and as a result of additional power input during arc operation, parts of the surface rose further to over 2000 • C. A combined diffuse mode and spot mode was observed.…”

“…Macroparticles continued to be generated and were removed from the boron plasma stream by subsequent magnetic filtering. The facility was used to form cubic boron nitride (cBN) thin films by reactive deposition of boron plasma in a nitrogen background (97). This demonstration that dense boron plasma can be formed in copious quantity in this way could have important implications for hard film synthesis and possibly also to the semiconductor community.…”

A New Approach to the Deposition of Elemental Boron and Boron-Based Coatings by Pulsed Magnetron Sputtering of Loosely Packed Boron Powder Targets

“…Other boron‐based materials (e.g. AlMgB 14 ,5 boron suboxides (BO x ),6–12 c‐BN,13–18 metal diborides,19–31 etc.) widen the potential application areas further.…”

“…Analysis of the scientific literature revealed that among the PVD methods, sputtering (usually enhanced magnetically or with a microwave device) is the most frequently reported method for deposition from boron targets and/or production of a boron plasma 8,12,19–21,23–25,28–30,32–37. Vacuum arc evaporation of boron4,14–18,38,39 has become much more attractive after the reports by Richter et al14–18 on an arc evaporation method of heated boron targets. The use of the conventional electron beam (EB) evaporation method or enhanced by a hot filament triode configuration (as discussed by Matthews et al40) has also been published 1,41.…”