The use of pulsed, intense ion beams for thermal surface treatment

Summary form only given. New developments in repetitive pulsed power and ion beam technology at Sandia National Laboratories and Cornell University may enable the use of repetitively pulsed, intense ion beams for commercial surface treatment applications. This capability is being developed in the joint Sandia-Cornell Ion BEam Surface Treatment (IBEST) program. This program uses the Repetitive High Energy Pulsed Power (RHEPP) facility together with magnetically confined anode plasma (MAP) ion diode technology to produce a system capable of operation at 0.5-1 MV and 2.5 kJ/pulse at repetition rates up to 120 Hz. This system should make it possible to treat metal and ceramic surfaces with ion beams which deposit 2-20 Joule/cm/sup 2/ uniformly in the top 2-10 /spl mu/m of the surface. Initial results of thermal surface treatment of 0-1 tool steel with a 10 J/cm/sup 2/, 1 MeV mixed proton and carbon ion beam on the LION accelerator at Cornell University demonstrated an increase in surface hardness by a factor of three and the formation of a finer-grain structure in the treated region.