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As one of the many nano-device fabrication techniques employed in the semiconductor industry, neutral beams are being examined using various methods to solve possible charge-related problems that occur during device processing. This review introduces a neutral beam generated by surface neutralization of an ion beam using a low angle forward reflection technique and explains its application to various areas such as surface treatments and etching. The neutralization efficiency of an ion beam using a low angle forward reflection technique was approximately 99.7%. When a metal-oxide-semiconductor device was etched using a reactive neutral beam, it was confirmed that charge-related problems such as aspect-ratio-dependent etching and gate oxide charging could be removed using reactive neutral beam etching instead of conventional reactive ion etching. Neutral beams can be beneficial to other devices such as the III-V device and field emission device.

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In this study, the effects of N 2 flow rate in the He/O 2 /N 2 gas mixture on the characteristics of a pin-to-plate dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) having the size of 100 mm  1000 mm have been investigated for the application to flat panel display processing such as photoresist ashing. The pin-to-plate DBD showed about 70-120% higher photoresist ashing rate at the same applied voltage compared to the conventional DBD. The addition of 3 slm of N 2 to He(10 slm)/O 2 (3 slm) showed the highest photoresist ashing rate of about 580 nm/min for the pin-to-plate DBD at 12 kV of AC voltage. The increase of N 2 flow rate in He/O 2 gas mixture up to 3 slm appeared to increase the density of N 2 þ ions and N 2 metastables while the oxygen atomic density appeared to decrease continuously. The increase of photoresist ashing rate with the increase of N 2 flow rate up to 3 slm was related to the increase of the substrate surface temperature by the increased collision of N 2 þ ions and N 2 metastables with the substrate.

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SiO 2 -like thin films were deposited at low temperatures ͑Ͻ50°C͒ by atmospheric-pressure plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition using a pin-to-plate-type dielectric barrier discharge with a gas mixture containing hexamethyldisilazane ͑HMDS͒/Ar/O 2 . The deposition rate increased with increasing concentration of HMDS in the gas mixture. However, a powdery film with Si-OH bonding, high roughness, and low transmittance was obtained, which was attributed to the enhanced homogeneous reaction with increasing HMDS. The increase in O 2 flow rate at a fixed HMDS flow rate increased the reaction rate of the remaining HMDS on the substrate surface, which resulted in an increase in deposition rate until the remaining HMDS had completely reacted. An increase in the oxygen flow rate also increased the surface roughness and decreased the optical transmittance slightly, possibly due to the formation of small SiO 2 particles in the gas phase during the dissociation of the gas mixture under high-oxygen-percentage conditions. At the optimum condition of HMDS ͑15 sccm͒/O 2 ͑300 sccm͒/Ar ͑2 slm͒, smooth SiO 2 -like thin films with a transmittance Ͼ95% could be obtained with a deposition rate of approximately 21 nm/min.

A screen-printed carbon nanotube ͑CNT͒ paste for applications to field emission emitters was treated with He, He/ Ar, and He/ N 2 atmospheric pressure plasmas. The effect of the different plasma treatments on the field emission characteristics of the screen-printed CNTs was investigated. The atmospheric pressure plasma applied to the screen-printed CNT paste for 10 s resulted in a reduction in the turn-on electric field. In particular, the application of a He/ N 2 plasma treatment decreased the turn-on electric field from 3.13 to 1.29 V / m and increased the field enhancement factor from 737 to 2775 after the treatment. These results suggest that an adequate atmospheric pressure plasma treatment of screen-printed CNTs can be effective in enhancing the field emission properties.