What is Plasma?

Plasma in the explanations

• Plasma nitridation introduces active nitrogen from a nitrogen plasma into the upper part of an oxide at relatively low temperatures (a few hundred °C), forming SiON with about 10–20% nitrogen.

  What is the treatment called that introduces plasma-generat…

• Plasma-enhanced CVD uses energetic plasma electrons to decompose and activate precursors, so it deposits at about 300–400 °C rather than the 600–800 °C typical of thermal CVD.

  What is the main advantage of plasma CVD (PECVD)?

• PEALD uses plasma during the reactant step to create highly reactive oxygen, nitrogen or hydrogen radicals, depositing at lower temperatures (room temperature to a few hundred °C) than thermal ALD and enabling chemistries that react poorly thermally, such as SiN and TiN.

  What is an advantage of plasma-enhanced ALD (PEALD)?

Questions that mention Plasma (50)

1. What is the treatment called that introduces plasma-generated nitrogen into the surface of a thin gate oxide?
2. What is an advantage of plasma doping, in which the wafer is exposed directly to a dopant-containing plasma and implanted with low-energy ions?
3. What is the main advantage of plasma CVD (PECVD)?
4. What is an advantage of plasma-enhanced ALD (PEALD)?
5. For films of the same material, in what way are high-temperature thermal CVD films generally better than plasma CVD films?
6. Which correctly describes silicon nitride deposited by plasma CVD?
7. Which method is used to tune the stress of plasma CVD silicon nitride from compressive to tensile?
8. What is the process called that removes photoresist by oxidizing it to ash with oxygen plasma or similar?
9. During plasma etching, what is the phenomenon called in which conductors acting as antennas, such as long wires, collect charge and damage the gate oxide they connect to?
10. Which is a characteristic of downstream etching, which supplies only plasma-generated radicals to the wafer?
11. What is an advantage of pulsed plasma, which etches while switching the RF power on and off?
12. Which correctly describes the "plasma" used in dry etching?
13. In plasma tools such as capacitively coupled ones, what is the phenomenon called in which the wafer-side electrode naturally acquires a negative DC potential that accelerates ions toward the wafer?
14. Which gas can etch silicon isotropically without a plasma, for example to remove sacrificial layers in MEMS?
15. Which technique gradually thins an exposed resist pattern with plasma to create lines narrower than the exposure limit?

Related terms

CVD Radical PECVD (plasma-enhanced CVD) Silane (SiH4) Sputtering Oxynitride (SiON) FinFET ALD Photoresist LPCVD (low-pressure CVD)