ION implantation is a surface modification process in which ions are injected into the near-surface region of a substrate. The semi-conductor industry relies on ION-implantation to make electronic…

ION implantation is a surface modification process in which ions are injected into the near-surface region of a substrate. The semi-conductor industry relies on ION-implantation to make electronic gates and other devices; the nuclear- and tooling- industries rely on other types of ION-implantation to "radiation-harden" the surfaces of metals. The genesis discovery mission collected solar wind relied on a natural form of ION implantation. That is, when the spacecraft deployed collectors in front of the natural stream of solar wind particles, the ions from the solar wind embedded themselves into the surfaces of the collectors on impact without aid because of their high streaming-velocity. Now that the solar-wind collectors are back on earth, the science team is investigating ways to extract and quantify the solar-wind in the genesis collectors. Because of that, the laboratory surface modification process of ION implantation has again become important to the success of the mission. There are two primary reasons for using ION implantation which are of equal importance. First, because the genesis fragments are very precious and yield very few solar wind ions per square centimeter. Accordingly, IT is in the best interest of the mission to simulate the solar wind by ION implantation into flight-like materials, so that these less-precious materials can be used to develop and validate analytical techniques. Second, the solar-wind implanted into the genesis collectors are, in some sense, an unknown quantity by definition. That is; if the relative amounts of various ions and elements in the solar wind were precisely known, there would be no need to run the mission. Moreover, many of the analytical techniques being developed (e.g., secondary ION mass spectroscopy, or sims) give solar-wind ION abundances which are relative to the matrix (collector) material. In order to quantify the solar-wind ION abundance, the laboratory must also analyze a known abundance of the same ions implanted into the same matrix. Accordingly, known ION implantations are required for the precise quantification of solar-wind extracted from the genesis-flown samples. To make both test material and analytical standards, ION implantation will be performed on genesis flight spare wafer collectors using a variety of elements determined by the genesis science team. The exact ION implantation requirements and elements used will be determined by genesis science team members during the course of genesis research investigations. However, the cost of actual implantation, which will be minor variations on what is quoted, will not exceed the cost of the proposed implants. The ION implantation provider will be given specific direction for each ION implantation and the genesis principal investigator or his representative from the science team will be present during the initial implantations. MS. Nancy g. Robertson will give technical direction for this effort. The period of performance is from after the award to 9/30/09.