Research on unusual cathode erosion patterns in the process of filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition

The cathode spot is crucial to vacuum arc technology and the cathode spot theories have been widely studied. However, the study on a type of unusual erosion patterns is still very rare so far. For blocking this erosion patterns’ formation, a new cathode water cooling system with higher cooling efficiency was designed. The paper studies the formation of this erosion patterns by macro-particle filtered vacuum arc plasma, arc spots splitting, and arc spots movement velocity in pure argon gas and mixture gas (oxygen and argon). The ratio of oxygen to argon is from 0 to 2.5. Meanwhile, energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) experiment was completed on the cross-section of this erosion pattern to study on the oxygen and other trace elements’ redistribution. In addition, an erosion model was proposed to explain the format process of these etching patterns. The results of this paper make a contribution to the theory of arc etching.