Ions for Nanotechnology

The aim of the nanocenter slovakion is its integration into university research (e.g. STU/MtF, materials research), which is highly required by professional public This will enable university to bring its research closer to the needs of industry and shift it to up-to-date topics on one side, and raise funds from private sources in the industry on the other side, which altogether represents a unique chance to train young qualified researchers in the field of contemporary materials research. The activities of the centre will be equally utilised by both in-house and external research and in a wide scale of services oriented on the support in introducing nanostructures using plasma and ion technologies into production processes for external industrial and other users.
The subject of the research, both basic and applied, will be focused on the modification of surface properties, such as hardness, friction, wear, fatigue, adhesion, as well as electrical, magnetic and optical properties, along with corrosion and bio-compatibility using ion beams technologies in the nanometer range. The research will employ the technologies, such as ion implantation (II), ion beam mixing (IBM) and ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD), as well as plasma assisted pulsing, non-pulsing, reactive and non-reactive processes where energetic ions form a decisive component of this process implementation. Highly topical is the research dealing with the development of nanostructures via ion beams.
Typical fields of utilisation are as follows:

• Exposed parts in automotive and mechanical engineering industry (injection nozzles, camshafts, bearings, valves and others);
• Medical and biomedical applications (prosthetics with interesting alloys, even those with the surfaces not sufficiently wear-resistant);
• Surface nitration of stainless steels via ion implantation with the purpose to improve wear resistance of stainless steels while preserving their high corrosion resistance;
• Stents (endoluminal catheter protheses), nano-porous stents for additional controlled administration of drugs, biocompatible and blood-compatible materials, etc. for modern medicine;
• Further possibilities of ion implantation in industry in the fields other than microelectronics, such as precise mechanics, special construction parts of expensive watches;
• High thermal oxidation protection (Ti AL – alloys, turbine construction);
• Mould injection of plastics (improvement of safety in the removing of injection-made plastic parts from the mould, as well as wear protection of highly exposed parts of forming tools);
• Ion implantation of polymers surfaces for the improvement of certain surface properties, such as printability for electric conductivity, biocompatibility, etc.

The important areas of ion beams technology application can be found in the field of ion beam analysis in a nanometer scale as well as in research and industry. Planned procedures are as follows:

• Rutherford Backscattering (RBS)
• Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD)
• Nuclear reaction Analysis (NRA)
• Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE)
• Proton Induced Gamma-ray Emission (PIGE)

They provide a possibility of a non-standard depth profile analysis with high precision of nearly all chemical elements. In special cases, such as hydrogen depth profile analysis or light elements (B, C, N, O) analysis in heavy matrix (steel), they are unequalled when compared to other procedures.
Three groups of devices suggested as basic equipment for various uses of ion implantation are as follows:

• PBII equipment (three machines with various chamber volumes, basic vacuum and pulse voltage);
• Two linear ion implanters in the energetic range up to 500 kV (standard equipment) and 200 kV as a so-called high current implanter;
• 6 MV Tandetron Accelerator with experimental stations for high energy ion implantation and ion beam analysis.

The basic equipment for plasma and ion beam assisted separation processes is as follows:

• IBAD instrumentation with different low energy ion sources;
• Combination of PBII and thin film deposition
• Universal magnetron sputtering application systems with possible reactive middle frequency pulsed dual magnetron sputtering and the possibility of choice for typical plasma diagnostics and thin layers diagnostics.

Along with the implantation processes for micro-electronic development of nano-clusters, nano-wires, and nano-arrays, typical surface processes aiming at nano-scale ordered structures such as surface design created by ion erosion, nano-porosity for bio-medicine usage, blistering, etc., play an important role. Anyway, the magnetic nano-scale order of a structure as an indication of ferro-magnetic phases in non-magnetic materials or magnetic domain configuration using ion beams is of certain interest. Ion-beam-assisted separation process or special reactive processes of magnetron sputtering contributed to a significant achievement in the field of fullerene materials, nano-crystalline highly refracting optical materials or in transparent electrical conductive oxides, which play an important role in solar technology and technology of displays. Coating by super hard substances such as a-C or c-BN is impossible without energetic ions.