Introduction
Plasma processing is used in many industries: in the manufacture of semiconductor devices (cleaning of the substrate for applying technological layers of the conductor; etching of the workpiece during the manufacture of microcircuits); in optical devices (cleaning the surface of lenses of telescopes and mirrors, for example, mirrors; in medicine (activation of the scalpel surface for applying an anti-corrosion layer of metal; cleaning of catheters and breathing masks) and others where it is necessary to remove dirt from the surface, make the surface more active, etch microstructures or modify the surface layer. Operations of preliminary surface preparation are mandatory in almost any technological process of production of micro and nanoelectronics, optics, photonics, etc. The required surface cleanliness is achieved by liquid chemical cleaning or plasma. The advantage of plasma purification over liquid purification is the absence of a reaction product, which is often toxic and harmful to the environment and human health.
For plasma processing, the products are placed in a vacuum chamber, air is pumped out, then the required process gas is supplied and a gas discharge is ignited. Plasma processing of products occurs due to the physical interaction of ions with the surface of the processing object. The type of exposure, the duration of treatment and the temperature of the sample depend on the type of process gas, ion energy and their quantity (density). Modern semiconductor, photonic and quantum micro and nanostructures impose increasingly stringent requirements for temperature and energy effects during their formation, while processing efficiency must be maintained. The solution is to use new methods of generating gas-discharge plasma that meets these requirements, for example, the use of low-temperature pulsed plasma with a high density of low-energy ions.
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