Study of metal film/substrate mixing by intense pulsed ion beam

Intense pulsed ion beam (IPIB) irradiation may benefit from mixing more than traditional ion beam does, due to its high power density and high energy deposition density. In this work, the IPIB mixing effects of three different film/substrate combinations, Ni/Ti, Ti/Al, and Al/Ti were studied. It has been found that the mixing efficiency is obviously dependent on the difference of some thermodynamic parameters of the two components to be mixed. The best mixing layer is that with gradient component distribution formed in Ni/Ti combination by single shot IPIB irradiation. Al/Ti and Ti/Al combinations, in which the thermodynamic parameters of Al and Ti are greatly different, did not get efficient mixing as Ni/Ti combination did, although the thickness of mixing layers are all greater than 1.5 μm. The mechanisms of IPIB mixing are discussed.