Plasma activated sintering (PAS) is a kind of hot pressing method. This sintering method is usually for powder sintering. But, it is very effective method for bonding of refractory metals to refractory metals such as tungsten, too. Purpose of this research is to make the ion gun parts (arc chamber) of ion implantation devices by bonding method. Usually, molybdenum is used for the parts. With increasingly high integration in IC memory, the problem of contamination of wafer due to molybdenum arose and therefore the parts made of tungsten are preferred by the industries. However, tungsten is too hard to be formed into the parts by conventional machining process.
The bonded joints of tungsten in the different bonding conditions (temperature, pressure, without interlayer, with interlayer of tungsten or tantalum powder) were evaluated by an optical microscope, an ultrasonic imaging and four point bending test. As a result, bending strength of the joints with interlayer of tantalum powder, tungsten powder and without any interlayer was measured to be about 400, 200 and 100MPa, respectively.