Applications of beam technology to material industry

Hanada, Masaya

The beam technology developed for neutral beam injection in fusion application has been applied to industry. Presently, positive ion beams are widely applied to process the semiconductor. For example, an intense argon ion beam is used for milling substrates of the semiconductor, and a large liquid crystal is also manufactured by implanting P+ or B+ ions on glass plates. Recently, the intense negative ion beam has also been developed and is being applied to new field in semiconductor industry. Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) is developing new technology for slicing the thin single-crystal semiconductor plates of several tens of micrometers in thickness from the ingot without waste by implanting the MeV-class H ion beam developed for ITER. This process is realized only by using the high-energy negative ion beam since the positive ion implantation requires the mass separation that practically limits the ion beam energy, namely, penetration depth of the ions. By implanting 725 keV H ions directly onto the Si ingot, the single-crystal Si plates of 10 mm in thickness have successfully been sliced. It is expected that this technology opens mass productions of high efficiency solar cells and micro-machines.