(45b) Increasing Contact Area for Scaled up Processing of Solids Using Nonthermal Plasmas

Nonthermal plasma reactors have been very successful in the microelectronics industry for promoting various surface reactions such as thin film deposition and reactive ion etching. Nonthermal plasmas contain electrons with very high kinetic energy, as well as ions and neutrals that are near room temperature. Nonthermal plasmas are intriguing systems that offer many unique features. For example, surfaces in contact with plasmas can be subjected to radicals that would be difficult, if not impossible to produce by thermal processing. In addition, surfaces can be bombarded with ions that have controllable kinetic energy in the range from approximately 0.5 to 10 eV. These ions can be used to promote various surface rearrangements, desorption reactions, and in some cases even sputtering reactions. These reactions are fundamentally surface reactions, and therefore the reaction rate scales with surface area. Established techniques involve processing materials that have relatively small surface area, and therefore the reaction rates are relatively low. We will discuss our recent results on increasing the reaction rate of nonthermal plasma with solid precursors by increasing the plasma-solid contact area.