Characterization of Amorphous Hydrogenated Carbon Formed by Low-Pressure Inductively Coupled Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Using Multiple Low-Inductance Antenna Units

Abstract

Three-dimensional plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) has been demonstrated using a new type high-density volumetric plasma source with multiple low-inductance antenna system. The plasma density in the volume of phi 200 mm x 100 mm is 5.1 x 10(10) cm(-3) within +/-5% in the lateral directions and 5.2 x 10(10)cm(-3) within +/-10% in the axial direction for argon plasma under the pressure of 0.1 Pa and the total power as low as 400 W. The uniformity of the thickness and refractive index is within +/-3.5% and +/-1%, respectively, for the a-C:H films deposited on the substrates placed on the six side walls, the top of the phi 60 mm x 80 mm hexagonal substrate holder in the pure toluene plasma under the pressure is as low as 0.04 Pa, and the total power is as low as 300 W. It is also found that precisely controlled ion bombardment by pulse biasing led to the explicit observation in Raman and IR spectra of the transition from polymer-like structure to diamond-like structure accompanied by dehydrogenation due to ion bombardment. Moreover, it is also concluded that the pulse biasing technique is effective for stress reduction without a significant degradation of hardness. The stress of 0.6 GPa and the hardness of 15 GPa have been obtained for 2.0 microm thick films deposited with the optimized deposition conditions. The films are durable for the tribology test with a high load of 20 N up to more than 20,000 cycles, showing the specific wear rate and the friction coefficient were 1.2 x 10(-7) mm3/Nm and 0.04, respectively.

Large-area low-damage plasma sources driven by multiple low-inductance-antenna modules for next-generation flat-panel display processes

“…In order to provide straightforward and promising solutions to overcome the problems described above, a series of our works [17][18][19][20][21] have been carried out on the basis of the plasma-generation and profile-control technologies employing multiple low-inductance antenna (LIA) modules, whose antenna size is substantially shorter than the propagation wavelength, to sustain meter-scale inductivelycoupled plasmas, whose concepts are schematically shown in Fig. 1.…”

Meters-Scale Large-Area Plasma Sources with Multiple Low-Inductance Antenna Units for Next-Generation Flat-Panel Display Processing

“…I. In our previous studies, this configuration for ICP generation allows high-density of 10 11 -10 1~ cm• 3 argon plasma production with high power transfer efficiency (as high as 90%) and low plasma damage (as low as I 0 V) via low-voltage operation of I CPs at only 1.1 Pa [8]. SinceLIA units can be installed almost at any location of the chamber wall, this technique has another merit of wide flexibility in designing large-scale 497 sources with high plasma density and has provided a way to produce uniform plasma in a meter-sized chamber.…”

Analysis of oxygen-based species introduced during plasma assisted reactive processing of a-IGZO films

“…Specifically, plasma-assisted reactive sputtering deposition of a-IGZO films has been studied. In this process, an inductively coupled plasma generated using multiple low-inductance antenna (LIA) modules [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] situated around a magnetron sputtering source is superimposed on the magnetron discharge, allowing independent control of the sputtering flux by adjusting the control target voltage and permitting modification of the reactive particles by changing the RF power applied to the LIA modules. In this manner, the unique plasma properties obtainable from a plasma-assisted reactive sputtering deposition system allow independent control of the sputtering flux by modifying the target voltage and the reactivity by adjusting the plasma density.…”