Short repetitive pulses of 50 – 75 KV applied to plasma immersion implantation of aerospace materials

High-energy plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) in the range of 50 – 100 keV is an interesting alternative of surface modification technique to more commonly investigated beam processing of materials in such energies. A Stacked Blumlein (SB) technique was used to reach high voltage pulses of 30 to 100 kV, with much cheaper and electronically simpler configuration compared to a hard tube system previously used by another PIII group. In the present paper, we discuss PIII results obtained for SB operations between 50 and 75 kV, which has been made it possible by using an improved vacuum system and a proper high voltage feedthrough, more recently. High energy (up to 75 keV), short (1.2 μs) repetitive (100 Hz) pulses were delivered to produce the plasma and carry out nitrogen ion implantation in the High Voltage Glow Discharge (HVGD) mode. Al7475, Al5052, Ti6Al4V alloys, and UHMWPE polymer, are materials of great interest to the aerospace field which are being treated by this high energy PIII technique.