A soft-landing (SL) instrument for depositing ions onto substrates using a laser ablation source is described herein. The instrument of the instant invention is designed with a custom drift tube and a split-ring ion optic for the isolation of selected ions and is capable of operating at atmospheric pressure. The drift tube allows for the separation and thermalization of ions formed after laser ablation through collisions with an inert bath gas that allow the ions to be landed at energies below 1 eV onto substrates. The split-ring ion optic is capable of directing ions toward the detector or a landing substrate for selected components.

A method for treating a substrate surface uses Neutral Beam irradiation derived from a gas-cluster ion-beam and articles produced thereby including lithography photomask substrates.

Provided is a method of controlling a gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) system for processing structures on a substrate. A GCIB system comprises deflection plates for directing a GCIB towards a substrate, the GCIB system coupled to a substrate scanning device configured to move a substrate in three dimensions. The substrate is exposed to the GCIB while the substrate is being moved by the substrate scanning device. A controller is used to control a set of deflection operating parameters comprising a deflection angle , voltage differential of the deflection plates, frequency of the deflection plate power, beam current, substrate distance, pressure in the nozzle, gas flow rate in the process chamber, separation of beam burns, duration of the bean burn, and/or duty cycle of the beam deflector output.

Nanoclusters are produced in a gas phase using a nanocluster manufacturing section including: a vacuum container; a sputtering source that has a target as a cathode, performs magnetron sputtering by pulse discharge, and generates plasma; a pulse power source that supplies pulsed power to the sputtering source; a first inert gas supply section that supplies a first inert gas to the sputtering source; a nanocluster growth cell that is contained in the vacuum container; and a second inert gas introduction section that introduces a second inert gas into the nanocluster growth cell. A multitude of supports are rolled in the gas phase and each of the supports is sprinkled with a multitude of nanoclusters to cause each support to support the multitude of nanoclusters.

A GCIB apparatus that can change the energy of ions to be irradiated onto a substrate without changing the electrode arrangement of the GCIB apparatus that have an extraction electrode arrangement optimized for a specific voltage or a permanent magnet type magnet that effectively removes singly charged monomer ions at that voltage, or the magnetic field strength of the permanent magnet type magnet. A separated high voltage power supply that generates a positive or negative high voltage in addition to the first high voltage power supply, the second high voltage power supply and the third high voltage power supply, and a separated high voltage application circuit that applies a positive or a negative separated high voltage supplied from the separated high voltage power supply to the ground electrode of the extraction electrode and the ground electrode portions of the one or more electrostatic lenses.