Experimental evaluation of CaO, SrO and BaO sputtering yields by Ne⁺ or Xe⁺ ions

Abstract

Barrier coating materials used in plasma display panel (PDP) cells strongly affect the discharge voltages. Although magnesium oxide (MgO) is widely used for barrier coating in the current generation of commercial PDP cells, other alkaline earth oxides have been studied as alternatives and indeed some of them are now known to have lower discharge breakdown voltages for PDP cells, which would increase the energy efficiency of the cells. On the other hand, the resistance against physical sputtering is another critical parameter for barrier coating. In this work, sputtering yields of CaO, SrO and BaO by monochromatic Ne or Xe ion beams are obtained experimentally as functions of beam energy in the range 100–300 eV. Despite the large differences in mass among the targets and incident ions, sputtering yields are found to be similar in magnitude among them for a given incident energy.