Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD) is one of the main plasma processes which induce charging damage to gate oxides during the VLSI processes. All the previous studies, however, describe the charging phenomena only at the beginning of PECVD process, when a very thin oxide layer covers the metal lines. We present and analyze in this paper, a new strong charging phenomenon in the e...

Here we have demonstrated a solventless plasma-based process that integrates low-cost, high throughput, high reproducibility and ecofriendly process for the functionalization of the next-generation point-of-care device platforms. Amine functionalities were deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) using a new precursor. The influence of the plasma RF power and the depositi...

A magnetically enhanced plasma chemical vapor deposition (MEPCVD) system has been developed for the deposition of DLC ®lm without deterioration of the ®lm quality. A perpendicular magnetic ®eld (B) to the electric ®eld was applied in the RF capacitively coupled plasma enhanced (PE) CVD system. Signi®cantly higher levels of ionization are achieved in the MEPCVD system, resulting in much lower se...

One of the major challenges of successfully integrating radio frequency integrated circuits (RFIC) on silicon (Si) continues to be the poor performance of inductors. The low resistivity Si substrate is a cost-effective solution, however it is a major source of energy loss and limits the quality factor (Q) of inductors at high frequency. Conventional oxides introduce considerable stress due to t...

A systematic study has been carried out to quantify the effect of microcrystallite nucleation in the intrinsic layer of protocrystalline Si:H p-i-n solar cells prepared by rf plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). Real-time spectroscopic ellipsometry (RTSE) results that have previously identified the transitions from amorphous to microcrystalline phase were confirmed with atomic for...

A key process in thin film silicon-based solar cell manufacturing is plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) of the active layers. The deposition process can be monitored in situ by plasma diagnostics. Three types of complementary diagnostics, namely optical emission spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and non-linear extended electron dynamics are applied to an industrial-type PECVD react...

In this article we investigate the effect of relative humidity on dielectric charging/discharging processes in electrostatically actuated MEMS devices. The assessment procedure is based on surface potential measurements using Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM) and it targets in this specific work PECVD silicon nitride films in view of application in electrostatic capacitive RF MEMS switches. ...

The suitability of three vapor deposition techniques for pore size modification was evaluated using polycarbonate track etched membranes as model supports. A feature scale model was employed to predict the pore geometry after modification and the resulting pure water flux. Physical vapor deposition (PVD) and pulsed plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), naturally, form asymmetric na...