Ion Implantation Technology: Proceedings of the International Conference on Ion Implantation Technology (8th) Held at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK on 30 July - 3 August 1990

The implantation of semiconductor devices as a manufacturing routine is a relatively recent development. But there is a much longer-standing tradition of scientific interest in the production of focused beams of heavy ions and in the various ways in which they interact with surfaces. This has its origins in Goldsteins 1886 description of Kanalstrahlen in an electric discharge. However, the real significance of this - almost inadvertent - observation of collimated beams of energetic ions only became apparent in 1993 when J.J. Thomson described the detailed behaviour of such positive rays in his parabola-ray apparatus. He gave a convincing explanation of the phenomenon of ionisation and he provided a pioneering account of ion implantation when he noted that some of the atoms constituting the positive rays seem to enter a metal against which they strike and either combine with the metal or get absorbed by it . The intensity of these ion beams was evidence by his description of the extent of the spluttering in his apparatus, as well as by his report of the effects of ion bombardment in the presence of reactive gases.