Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A new metal ion source is presented based on sustained self-sputtering plasma in a magnetron discharge. Metals exhibiting high self-sputtering yield like Cu, Ag, Zn, and Bi can be used in a high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) discharge such that the plasma almost exclusively contains singly charged metal ions of the target material. The plasma and extracted ion beam are quiescent. The ion beams consist mostly of singly charged ions with a space-charge limited current density which reached about 10 mA/cm2 at an extraction voltage of 45 kV and a first gap spacing of 12 mm.