Laser power and fluoresence signal are acquired directly to PC for fast analysis. Both detectors output directly to PC for experiment control and rapid analysis. The laser interferometry signal is acquired on up to 4 spatially distinct photodiodes, again directly to PC for rapid analysis. Helical resonator Helical resonator plasma source is capable of providing higher plasma densities compared to ICP sources. In our system, a radio-frequency bias is applied to the substrate to control the ion energy independently from ion flux.
Vacuum systems are available for attaining the required high vacuum.
XRD, SEM, Tc and Jc measurement facilities are available for characterization of the films. For obtaining statistical information about the argon impacts, we use an nCUBE2 parallel supercomputer at Sandia Laboratories. An identical version of the serial code, parallelized by Steve Plimpton, we run a single argon impact on each of the 1024 nodes, and collect and tabulate masive amounts of trajectory data. By performing a single impact on one node, inter-processor communication is zero, and efficiency remains close to unity. Si-product yields are low, on the order of 0.01.