The Study Of The Etching Process With RF Cold Plasma At Atmospheric-pressure

A cold plasma, which is operated with radio frequency (RF) power and produces a stable cold plasma stream at atmospheric pressure, has been developed. This novel technology has several advantages: the plasma temperature is low, the damage caused by the ion bombing with high energy can be avoided, the cost by vacuum system can be reduced and the environment can not be polluted. So far, it has been used in etching, deposition, decontamination chemical and disinfection. Therefore, it is very necessary to study the electrical and temperature characteristics of the discharge. It is very important in research and the practical application.An immersion plasma apparatus was used in etching photo resists and an atmospheric pressure plasma jet was used in etching silicon. For APPJ, a large volume of expensive helium is consumed for etching. By comparing the electrical and temperature characteristics between Ar/O₂ and He/O₂ discharge we considered that the gas heating is much more efficient for Ar/O₂ discharge than for He/O₂ discharge. So argon could replace helium as carrier gas to produce a wide range of chemistry. The photo resists S9912 and kapton after high temperature processes have been etched for Ar/O₂ discharge. The results indicated that etching rate was high. In the study of etching silicon, we showed the different etching rate by changing the discharge parameters and compared the etching rate between the several line widths.This dissertation explores the usage of the technology in semiconductor field.