Abstract
The prevention of glow-to-arc transition exhibited by micro dielectric barrier discharge (MDBD), as well as its long lifetime, has generated much excitement across a variety of applications. Silicon nitride (SiNx) is often used as a dielectric barrier layer in DBD due to its excellent chemical inertness and high electrical permittivity. However, during fabrication of the MDBD devices with multilayer films for maskless nano etching, the residual stress-induced deformation may bring cracks or wrinkles of the devices after depositing SiNx by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). Considering that the residual stress of SiNx can be tailored from compressive stress to tensile stress under different PECVD deposition parameters, in order to minimize the stress-induced deformation and avoid cracks or wrinkles of the MDBD device, we experimentally measured stress in each thin film of a MDBD device, then used numerical simulation to analyze and obtain the minimum deformation of multilayer films when the intrinsic stress of SiNx is −200 MPa compressive stress. The stress of SiNx can be tailored to the desired value by tuning the deposition parameters of the SiNx film, such as the silane (SiH4)–ammonia (NH3) flow ratio, radio frequency (RF) power, chamber pressure, and deposition temperature. Finally, we used the optimum PECVD process parameters to successfully fabricate a MDBD device with good quality.
Highlights
Due to its long lifetime and prevention from glow-to-arc transition, micro dielectric barrier discharge (MDBD) has wide applications, such as UV light source [1], surface modification [2,3], environmental issues [4], synthesis and etching of materials [5,6], biomedical [7], etc
The mismatch of the coefficient of expansion thermal expansion (CTE)the between the and thinthe films and theand mismatch of the coefficient of thermal (CTE) between thin films substrate, substrate, and the intrinsic stress is generally associated with processes occurring during film of the intrinsic stress is generally associated with processes occurring during film growth
In order to balance the residual stress of multilayer thin films and minimize the microplasma device, we investigated the deformation profiles of thickness (y) direction with various deformation device, we investigated the deformation profiles of thickness intrinsic stressesofofthe
Summary
Due to its long lifetime and prevention from glow-to-arc transition, micro dielectric barrier discharge (MDBD) has wide applications, such as UV light source [1], surface modification [2,3], environmental issues [4], synthesis and etching of materials [5,6], biomedical [7], etc Among these applications, various maskless material etching and synthesis applications have been reported [8,9,10,11,12]. Yang et al [14] used a paper-based microplasma array to perform maskless patterning of poly(ethylene oxide)-like thin films with a feature size down to the submillimeter scale. This microplasma device is low-cost and flexible, but the resolution is not high enough.
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