Fabrication of plasma probe for chemical vapor deposition

An atmospheric pressure low-power, capacitively coupled RF plasma probe was designed and fabricated for selective-area chemical vapor deposition of materials at room temperature. The probe consisted of a gas channel with two electrodes forming a capacitor through the gas and channel wall. An inductor was used to match the capacitive electrodes to 50Ω RF source at 600 MHz. The resulting LC circuit along with the plasma formed a second order system with a stable resonance near 600 MHz. Ge, Si, si
1−x
Ge
x
and Ni were respectively deposited using SiH
4
, GeH
4
, and nickelocene on various substrates including microscope glass slide, gold, p- and n-type Si, SiO
2
and Si
3
N
4
. SEM, AFM and EDX studies were used to study the deposited materials. Similar approach was then adopted to generate plasma between conducting AFM tip and a substrate to deposit and pattern materials at 10–500 nm scale.