Guocheng Shao:

Your plasma system should do a nitrogen plasma just as effectively as with
oxygen and argon. As for reflected power the lower is better but in all
cases it should be less than 10 watts reflected. Your system must have
either an automatic tuning network or maybe even the ability to manually
adjust somewhere on the system. This will allow you to fine tune the
reflected power for optimum performance. Your plasma should be a bright
pinkish color once struck. Good luck  Bob Henderson

-----Original Message-----
From: mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org [mailto:mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org]
On Behalf Of Shao Guocheng
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 10:51 PM
To: mems-talk@memsnet.org
Subject: [mems-talk] nitrogen plasma questions

Hi, all,

     One of my colleagues are trying to do some nitrogen plasma surface
treatment. We have a PC2000 plasma cleaning system from South Bay Tech.
available in our lab. But it is normally used for sampling cleaning with
oxygen or argon plasma. We have been reading literatures about process
parameters they used in their nitrogen plasma treatment procedure, it looks
like a 50mTorr vacuum, 13.56MHz 150Watts forward power RF power supplier and
a nitrogen line should be able to do the job. We read the system manual and
talked to the technicians in South Bay Tech. Our system can reach these
process parameter values and the technician guy said he think the reflection
power may be higher than usual oxygen or argon plasma. According to my
understanding, small amount of reflection power should be fine, the RF power
supplier should be able to dissipate this power. But I'm not 100% sure.

   So if there's any one here have worked with nitrogen plasma, would you
pls share some process details with me? and is there any precautions that we
should be taken when working with nitrogen plasma, comparing to oxygen
plasma and argon plasma.

   Thanks in advance.

Guocheng Shao