Fundamentals of High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HIPIMS) - Plasma Studies and Materials Synthesis

为了发挥作用，许多现代技术需要具有非常特殊表面特性的部件。F1引擎的部件必须非常耐磨损，医疗植入物必须不能在人体内腐蚀，甚至像镜框和手机的表面光洁度这样的日常物品也必须能够经受住日常生活的撞击和刮擦。工业上通常是用一种像钢这样的日常材料，用一种高度专业化的表面涂层来保护它，从而获得这些理想的性能。我们的研究旨在提高我们对一种令人兴奋的生产涂料的新技术的理解。这种新方法被称为HIPIMS（代表高功率脉冲磁控溅射），是等离子体技术家族的最新成员，在等离子体技术中，涂层是通过用精心准备的原子和离子轰击你想要涂层的表面来产生的。HIPIMS于1995年首次被发现，最近在我们小组和其他地方的工作已经表明，它产生了一种极好的等离子体，具有离子特性的组合，应该产生耐磨，耐腐蚀的涂层。我们也对这些涂层本身进行了一些早期试验，结果证明它们确实非常有前途。因为它是如此的新，HIPIMS的许多关键特性我们还不了解。HIPIMS的工作原理是制造一系列短而高功率的脉冲。我们知道等离子体在脉冲中达到了不寻常的状态，但细节还没有弄清楚。同样，等离子体在脉冲过程中的变化方式也尚不清楚。这些问题的答案将引起研究等离子体的科学家的兴趣，并将帮助技术人员了解如何应用HIPIMS来创造新的、更好的涂层。在研究中，我们将测量HIPIMS等离子体的特性，以了解等离子体的组成如何随时间变化。我们将通过仔细分析等离子体的电学特性和研究它发出的光谱来做到这一点。我们将把这些数据输入HIPIMS的运行模型，并努力开发一个解释脉冲行为的理论。我们还将使用HIPIMS制作涂层，并测量其性能（例如它们的硬度），并在电子显微镜下检查它们，以帮助我们了解这些性能与HIPIMS等离子体产生的微观结构之间的关系。这种理解应该有助于实业家开发可以产生新的，更好的涂料的hiims工艺。几年后，我们的汽车引擎、髋关节置换和移动电话可能都依赖于使用hiims开发的组件！

To be effective, many modern technologies need component parts with very special surface properties. The parts of an F1 engine must be very resistant to wear, medical implants must not corrode inside the human body, and even everyday objects like the surface finish of glasses-frames and mobile phones must be able to survive the knocks and scratches of day-to-day life. Industry very often gets these desirable properties by taking an everyday material such steel and protecting it with a highly specialised surface coating . Our research aims to improve our understanding of an exciting new technology for producing coatings.The new method is called HIPIMS (which stands for High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering) and is a very recent addition to a family of plasma techniques, in which the coating is produced by bombarding the surface you want to coat with carefully prepared atoms and ions. HIPIMS was first discovered in 1995, and recent work in our group and elsewhere has already shown that it produces an excellent plasma, with a combination of ion properties which should produce hard wearing, corrosion resistant coatings. We have also made some early trials of the coatings themselves, and they do indeed turn out to be very promising.Because it is so new, there are a number of key features of HIPIMS we don't yet understand. HIPIMS works by making a series of short, very high-power pulses. We know that the plasma achieves unusual conditions during the pulse, but the details are not yet worked out. Similarly, the way the plasma changes during the pulse is not yet clear. Answering these questions would be of interest to scientists who study plasmas, and would help technologists to learn how to apply HIPIMS to create new, better coatings.In the research we will measure properties of HIPIMS plasmas to understand how the composition of the plasma changes with time. We will do this by carefully analysing the electrical properties of the plasma and studying the spectrum of the light it emits. We will feed the data into models of how HIPIMS operates and work to develop a theory which explains the pulse behaviour. We will also make coatings using HIPIMS and measure their properties (for example how hard they are) and examine them under electron microscopes to help our understanding of how the properties relate to the microscopic structure produced by the HIPIMS plasma. This understanding should help industrialists to develop HIPIMS processes which can generate new, better coatings. In a few years our car engines, hip-replacements and mobile phones may all be reliant on components developed using HIPIMS!