Method and device for atmospheric plasma processing

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and an equipment for plasma treatment under the atmospheric pressure for treating an article to be treated comprising: providing a solid dielectric on at least one opposing face of a pair of opposing electrodes under a pressure near the atmospheric pressure; introducing a treatment gas between said a pair of opposing electrodes; generating plasma by applying an electric field between said electrodes; and contacting said plasma with said article to be treated, wherein an used gas is exhausted from the vicinity of treatment section where said plasma and said article to be treated are in contact, and said vicinity of treatment section is maintained under a specified gas atmosphere by a gas atmosphere control mechanism.

Description

Technical field [0001] The present invention relates to an atmospheric pressure plasma processing method at a pressure near atmospheric pressure. The processed gas is discharged from the vicinity of the processing part and the atmospheric pressure plasma is equipped with a gas atmosphere adjustment mechanism that maintains a specific gas atmosphere in the vicinity of the processing part. Body treatment method and device. Background technique [0002] In the past, methods of modifying the surface of the object to be processed or forming a thin film on the object to be processed by generating glow discharge plasma under low-pressure conditions have also been put into practical use. However, processing under these conditions requires a vacuum chamber and a vacuum exhaust device, and the processing operation becomes complicated. Therefore, the surface processing device becomes a high-priced product and is hardly used for processing large-area substrates. For this reason, a method of ...

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Problems solved by technology

But said method all is to contain the gas atmosphere that plasma occurs in the gas atmosphere of the organic compound such as helium or xenon is limited

In addition, helium is not suitable for industrial use due to its high price, and in the case of containing organic compounds, the organic compounds themselves often react with the gas to be treated, so that the required surface modification treatment cannot be performed

[0004] Moreover, for the formation of thin films in the manufacture of semiconductor elements, etc., the existing atmospheric pressure plasma treatment method is unfavorable to industrial processes because of its slow processing speed.

In addition, in the process of forming a film at high temperature and dry etching, the object to be processed is often oxidized due to the gas atmosphere near the processing part where the plasma is in contact with the object to be processed, the formed film is oxidized, and the corrosion part is oxidized, etc. Therefore, there is a problem that high-quality semiconductor elements cannot be obtained

In order to solve these problems, once the processing is performed under vacuum in a closed container, it will be the same as the processing under low pressure, and cannot be adapted to high-speed processing and large-area substrate processing.

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