Ion beam assisted deposition or IBAD or ""IAD"" (not to be confused with ion beam induced deposition, IBID) is a materials engineering technique which combines ion implantation

Ion implantation

Ion implantation is a materials engineering process by which ions of a material are accelerated in an electrical field and impacted into another solid. This process is used to change the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the solid...

 with simultaneous sputtering

Sputter deposition

Sputter deposition is a physical vapor deposition method of depositing thin films by sputtering, that is ejecting, material from a "target," that is source, which then deposits onto a "substrate," such as a silicon wafer...

 or another physical vapor deposition

Physical vapor deposition

Physical vapor deposition is a variety of vacuum deposition and is a general term used to describe any of a variety of methods to deposit thin films by the condensation of a vaporized form of the desired film material onto various workpiece surfaces...

 technique. Besides providing independent control of parameters such as ion energy

Energy

In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

, temperature

Temperature

Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...

 and arrival rate of atomic species

Chemical species

Chemical species are atoms, molecules, molecular fragments, ions, etc., being subjected to a chemical process or to a measurement. Generally, a chemical species can be defined as an ensemble of chemically identical molecular entities that can explore the same set of molecular energy levels on a...

 during deposition, this technique is especially useful to create a gradual transition between the substrate material and the deposited film, and for depositing films with less built-in strain than is possible by other techniques. These two properties can result in films with a much more durable bond

Chemical bond

A chemical bond is an attraction between atoms that allows the formation of chemical substances that contain two or more atoms. The bond is caused by the electromagnetic force attraction between opposite charges, either between electrons and nuclei, or as the result of a dipole attraction...

 to the substrate. Experience has shown that some meta-stable

Metastability

Metastability describes the extended duration of certain equilibria acquired by complex systems when leaving their most stable state after an external action....

 compounds like cubic boron nitride (c-BN), can only be formed in thin films when bombarded with energetic ions during the deposition process.