Formation of gold clusters in the ionized clusterbeam deposition technique

The unique aspect of the ionized cluster beam (ICB) thin film depositionmethod is that material is deposited from a beam of atom clusters, a fraction of which are ionized and accelerated to the substrate. A large number of different material films have been deposited to research the ICB method and advantages in film formation have been claimed. However, because methods for measuring cluster size distribution in film deposition instruments have been under development, the presence of clusters in the depositing beam normally has been inferred from theory rather than measured directly. Thus it is not yet clear whether interesting ICB film effects were due to clusters or other factors. A new measurement method which overcomes many of the difficulties of previous methods is developed in this work. Gold clusters up to an average of 3 gold atoms per ionized cluster have been formed and detected. Cluster size increased with crucible pressure and attempts to achieve larger clusters are underway.