We have studied the ion spectra of the plasma produced by the metal vapor vacuum arc for the case when the cathode material is a solid solution TiHf alloy of variable composition ratio. A vacuum arc ion source was used to generate an intense beam of metal ions and a timehyphen;ofhyphen;flight ion chargehyphen;tohyphen;mass diagnostic was used to measure the beam ion species and charge state distributions. A range of different cathode compositions was examined, from pure Ti to pure Hf and with five different alloy mixes between these extremes. We find that the ratio of ion currents in the multiplehyphen;species ion beam corresponds approximately to the ratio of elements in the cathode, and that the mean charge states of the elemental ion components remain approximately constant as the cathode composition ratio is changed. Multispecies metal ion beams can readily be generated in this way and the ion species characteristics of the beam are predictable.
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