Materials Science of Thin Films, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5 Plasma and Ion Beam Processing of Thin Films

5.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter details the ways in which plasmas and ion beams have been harnessed to yield efficient methods for both deposition and etching of thin films used in a variety of technologies. Historically, the challenges of microelectronics, virtually single-handedly, thrust a long-standing but largely scientific interest in the physics and chemistry of plasmas and glow discharges into the main arena of thin-film technology. As we shall see, it was a combination of the need for improved thin-film metallizations and insulating films, in the face of the inexorable shrinkage of device feature dimensions, that drove the growing adoption of plasma processing (Refs. 1, 2). A brief ...