This paper is devoted to the study of the possibilities of unfiltered aluminium vacuum arc plasma application for intermetallic layers formation using the high-frequency short-pulse plasma immersion ion implantation method. It is shown experimentally that the number density of aluminium macroparticles (MPs) on the substrate surface is decreased dramatically by 3 orders of magnitude when the ion-plasma substrate treatment time is increased from 30 s to 3 min at the bias potential -2 kV. It was shown that at high intensity low energy plasma immersion implantation of Al ions in Ti and Ni substrates a deep layer (several mu m) of aluminium dopants with concentration in the range of (12-35) at% can be formed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.