Experimental and numerical characterization of an argon RF inductively coupled plasma for surface treatment

Abstract

Summary form only given. Plasma-surface interactions depend highly on plasma parameters offering an appreciable versatility on the use of plasma discharges for surface treatment applications including surface cleaning, surface etching, wettability and adhesion increase, friction reduction, cell attachment improvement and surface-protein interactions alteration. This work is supported by the French public funding agency OSEO and aims to provide surface treatment solutions with an Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) source. Prior to any treatment attempt, experimental and numerical diagnostics have been conducted on an ICP discharge in argon in order to obtain a better understanding of the plasma behavior and properties. In our experimental setup, the discharge is generated with a 13.56 MHz radiofrequency ICP source within a cylindrical quartz tube. The tube is connected to a separate process chamber where samples to be treated may be inserted. The gas parameters are the argon flow rate (<; 500 sccm) and the pressure (<; 1 mbar). Optical emission spectroscopy diagnostics are conducted with an Automated Imaging Spectrometer (iHR320 Horiba Jobin Yvon) and a Princeton Instruments PI-MAX intensified CCD camera. Moreover, Langmuir Double Probe diagnostics are done with an Impedans ALP Sytem (Impedans Ltd). Simultaneous measurements are performed through different reactor openings for spatio-temporal characterization. In parallel, a time dependent 2 dimensional fluid model is developed for comparison purpose1. The numerical model is applied to a simplified 2D geometry corresponding to the experimental chamber with pure Ar gas. In both numerical and experimental domain, the influence of various parameters, particularly gas pressure and injected power, are studied. In this work, basic plasma characteristics such as optical emission and electron temperature in the chamber will be provided. In addition, comparison between the experimental and simulation results will be presented.