Presidential Young Investigator

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This grant is to provide research support for Dr. Brian E. Thompson under the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Awards Program. Glow discharge (plasma) processing plays a large role in the semiconductor industry. The overall goal of this research is to be able to operate and develop plasma processes better by having (1) increased understanding of the physical phenomena, (2) predictive simulation techniques, and (3) more easily-applied experimental diagnostics. Studying electron and ion concentrations in plasma discharges is a major thrust of this project because these charged particles affect gas-phase reactions and surface phenomena. The goal is to develop non-intrusive techniques to determine electron and ion concentrations and energies in industrially-used reactors. The PI also plans to model charged particles in plasmas. One goal is to create a model that predicts electron and ion energies and concentrations in radio-frequency plasmas. The other goal is to examine and optimize the solution techniques for the model equations. Besides charged-particle analysis, he will examine the reactions of charge-neutral species in the discharge. One long term goal of this modeling is finding a practical way of predicting creation rates of neutral species from electron-molecule collisions as a function of discharge operating parameters. Another goal is to develop experimental techniques, especially frequency response analysis, for determining the applicable rate constants in an operating system. The above will be applied to the low-frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition of nitrides and oxides and oxygen/nitrogen plasmas for cleaning electronic parts.