Intense atomic nitrogen beams have been produced by a novel arc-heated source for pulsed-laser-ablation deposition. The arc discharge has been carried in pure nitrogen gas and maintained stable in arc pressure of 30-300 Torr. The average beam kinetic energy changes with the arc pressure from 0.8 to 2 eV. Strong atomic emission lines in 383-433 nm spectral region indicated that the arc-heated source generated an appreciable flux of nitrogen atoms. Nitrogen atoms, rather than N2 molecules in the arc, have been considered as the most likely nitrogen-arc species responsible for doping and synthesis of nitride film such as CNx, ZnSe:N, GaN, etc.
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