Advances in Low Temperature RF Plasmas

The meeting of academia and industry has resulted in a greater understanding of low-temperature plasmas at radio frequencies. These writings cover a wide range of issues and advances in plasmas operating at such frequencies and low temperatures.

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Low temperature plasmas have had a very broad range of applications ever since their discovery. However, recent developments in the dextrous handling of dry etching non-equilibrium plasma have attracted a great common interest that has driving force behind the major developments in diagnostic, theoretical and numerical techniques since the 1980s. A greater fundamental understanding of the kinetics of radio-frequency (rf) plasmas and their interaction with surfaces in regard to the process of large scale integrated circuits has been achieved through the cooperation between academia and industry. At the same time, new applications have become possible, and the basic understanding of low temperature rf plasmas has diffused to other areas of plasma physics. Each chapter of this book is edited in the same form as the article collected in the special issue of "Applied Surface Science", which is published in memory of the International Workshop on Basis for Low Temperature Plasma Applications at Hakone in Japan on July 24 - 25 of 2001.
The basic goal in the selection of topics was to cover the range of issues that represent the building blocks of the complex, "vertically integrated" plasma simulation schemes including surface processes. The text also shows examples of integrated codes and how they are implemented in the development of new strategies of plasma processing. Such codes may be used both in modern experiments and in the computer aided design and control of the plasma devices of the next generation. These are based on the transport theory of electrons, ions and neutrals, as well as on numerical modellings and on the available collision and transport data describing gas and surface phases. The work also covers some aspects of simulation and modeling aimed at higher density plasmas. All the chapters present a relatively complete review of the developments in these fields since the 1980s as well as a review of their status of development in 2002, and there is a blend of research reviews from both academia and industry.