Ion plating is essentially vapor deposition onto a substrate which is the cathode of a glow discharge. The most important characteristic of the technique is that the growing film is subjected to a flux of high energy particles (neutrals and ions). In this study we report information about the effect of ion plating parameters on grain diameter and crystallite size distribution. At a constant potential grain size remains constant with the increase of ion density. On the other hand, at a constant ion density the grain size decreases with the substrate potential increment. Ion bombardment also has an effect on the crystallite size distribution. The ion plated films show a higher degree of uniformity in grain size than vacuum evaporated films. In contrast with vacuum evaporated films, where the grain size is proportional to the thickness, no variation of grain size with film thickness has been observed for the ion‐plated films. Electron diffraction patterns have shown that the orientation remains near random over the entire J and V range studied.
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