Plasma Etching

The process of etching a polymer, organic substance or hydrocarbon based solid works well with an oxygen based plasma process. This oxygen based plasma etchs these materials by combining the carbon and hydrogen in the molecular structure with oxygen from the plasma. This produces CO and HO in combination with short molecular chains that remain in a gas state and are easily pumped out of the chamber as a gas.

The process of plasma etching to reduce an oxide on the surface of a metal or in a bulk oxide state is etched with a hydrogen based gas or gas mixture. Similarly, this plasma etching process uses the hydrogen to combine with the oxygen on the surface and produce HO and other variants of the bulk molecular structure into a gas that is pumped out of the vacuum system.

使用氩气表面蚀刻表面的过程是一种物理蚀刻方法，与上述化学蚀刻方法相比。在这种血浆蚀刻血浆中重氩原子能量的方法中，血浆的能量非常高。这种高水平的能量使单个氩原子能够向破坏表面材料的分子键的部分提供更多的能量。结果是，将这些表面材料原子或短分子成分蚀刻或弹射到血浆中以去除。

The process of plasma etching a material with a robust molecular structure or complex composition like metals and chemically stable polymers is done with a corrosive gas based component. This corrosive gas of choice often focuses on a fluorine based chemistry like CF4, SF6, or other similar gases. The addition of these kinds of corrosive components provide a method of converting additional chemistries into a gas state providing a method of plasma etching.

Reactive ion etching (RIE)is a plasma etching process that adds a charge to the part being etched which induces a directional component to the etching process. This directionality of the etch enables significantly smaller etch feature sizes which is commonly used in the semiconductor industry.