High-frequency technological low-temperature plasmas play a key role in various industrial processes of high societal relevance such as semiconductor manufacturing and gas conversion. Due to their complexity, the fundamentals of their operation are typically not understood and process development is done empirically. The continuous increase of process requirements with respect to precision and reproducibility, however, necessitates knowledge-based approaches toward process development and monitoring. Diagnostic techniques used for this should be non-invasive, have short measuring times, and have low equipment costs. A valuable tool to understand plasma processes is to measure the spatio-temporally resolved dynamics of energetic electrons with Phase Resolved Optical Emission Spectroscopy (PROES), as these electrons generate the plasma through ionization and reactive radicals through dissociation of the neutral gas. However, PROES is typically performed based on expensive intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) cameras, is slow, and requires large windows for optical access to the plasma, that do not exist in commercial reactors. To overcome these limitations we present a modified version of this diagnostic, Fiber PROES, that is based on an optical fiber in combination with a photo-multiplier tube (PMT) operated in a photon-counting mode. Compared to classical PROES only a small fiber access port is required, which is typically available in commercial plasma reactors, the costs are strongly reduced, and the measurement speed is increased. We demonstrate that Fiber PROES yields similar results compared to classical ICCD-camera-based PROES by comparing measurements taken in a geometrically symmetric capacitively coupled RF plasma based on both PROES variants.
Field | Value |
---|---|
Publisher | |
Authors | |
Release Date | 2025-02-25 |
Identifier | 74e11945-2dd1-46f3-83b2-27da4cbbb2fb |
Permanent Identifier (URI) | |
Is supplementing | |
Plasma Source Name | |
Plasma Source Application | |
Plasma Source Specification | |
Plasma Source Properties | 13.56 MHz CCP discharge |
Language | English (United States) |
License | |
Plasma Medium Name | |
Contact Name | Florian Beckfeld |
Contact Email | |
Plasma Diagnostic Properties | Fiber photon counting PROES |
Public Access Level | Public |
Plasma Diagnostic Name | |
Funding Agency | |
Project | |
Subproject |