Surface-conductivity enhancement of PMMA by keV-energy metal-ion implantation

An experiment has been proposed to measure the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) with high precision at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Spallation Neutron Source. One of the requirements of this experiment is the development of PMMA (Lucite) material with a sufficiently conductive surface to permit its use as a high-voltage electrode while immersed in liquid He. At the ORNL Multicharged Ion Research Facility, an R&D activity is under way to achieve suitable surface conductivity in poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) using metal ion implantation. The metal implantation is performed using an electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) ion source and a recently developed beam line deceleration module that is capable of providing high flux beams for implantation at energies as low as a few tens of eV. The latter is essential for reaching implantation fluences exceeding 1 × 1016 cm−2, where typical percolation thresholds in polymers have been reported. In this contribution, we report results on initial implantation of Lucite by Ti and W beams with keV energies to average fluences in the range 0.5-6.2 × 1016 cm−2. Initial measurements of surface-resistivity changes are reported as function of implantation fluence, energy, and sample temperature. We also report X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) surface and depth profiling measurements of the ion implanted samples, to identify possible correlations between the near surface and depth resolved implanted W concentrations and the measured surface resistivities.