Engineering Research Equipment Grant: A Corrosion-Resistant Electron-Impact Fragment Spectrometer

基于等离子体的工艺被用于制造超大规模集成（VLSI）微电子器件等技术。等离子体反应器由放置在两个电极（一个通电，一个接地）之间的晶片组成。等离子体流经环空，通过离子与扩散到晶圆片的中性离子一起向晶圆加速来完成薄膜的蚀刻和沉积。挥发性反应产物扩散回等离子体的主体，在那里它们参与复杂的碰撞过程链。需要更多信息的两个领域是晶圆片的表面，在那里蚀刻和沉积发生和等离子体的反应物质产生。PI感兴趣的是阐明等离子体中发生的过程，并利用这些信息来增加对等离子体-表面相互作用的理解，包括撞击表面的物种的通量和性质。反应性等离子体成分是由惰性原料气通过各种电子碰撞过程产生的。这笔拨款将提供资金，使PI能够建立一个多功能的耐腐蚀电子冲击碎片光谱仪，该光谱仪将允许对目前用于低温处理等离子体的关键工业气体的电子冲击解离进行全面研究。仪器将配备诊断工具(如：光学光谱，飞行时间（TOF）和TOF质谱，以及激光诱导荧光光谱)来测量电离电子撞击产生的辐射，亚稳和中性以及带电基态碎片形成的绝对截面和外观电位。实验结果将用于预测和优化放电装置的性能特征，该装置最终将用于新型等离子体处理反应器的设计、操作和控制。

Plasma based processes are used in technologies such as the fabrication of very-large-scale-integrated (VLSI) micro-electronic devices. A plasma reactor consists of a wafer placed between two electrodes (one powered and one grounded). The plasma flows through the annulus and etching and deposition of films is accomplished by ions that are accelerated towards the wafer in conjunction with neutrals that diffuse to the wafer. Volatile reaction products diffuse back into the bulk of the plasma where they participate in a complex chain of collision processes. Two areas about which more information is needed are the surface of the wafer where the etching and deposition occur and the plasma where the reactive species are produced. The PI is interested in elucidating the processes that occur in the plasma and using that information to increase understanding of the plasma-surface interaction including the flux and nature of the species that impinge on the surface. Reactive plasma constituent are produced from inert feed gases by various electron collision processes. This grant will supply funds to enable the PI to build a versatile corrosion-resistent electron-impact fragment spectrometer that will allow a comprehensive study of the electron impact dissociation of those key industrial gases that are currently employed in low temperature processing plasmas. The instrument will be equipped with diagnostic tools (eg. optical spectroscopy, time-of-flight (TOF) and TOF-mass spectroscopy, and laser-induced-flourescence spectroscopy) to measure absolute cross sections and appearance potentials for the formation of radiating, metastable and neutral as well as charged ground-state fragments produced by dissociative electron impact. The experimental results will be used to predict and optimized the performance characteristics of a discharge device which will ultimately be used in the design, operation and control of novel plasma processing reactors.