Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
www.elsevier.com/locate/tsf
Abstract
In order to achieve inner wall surface treatment of glass tube of micrometer and gas decomposition flowing through a small diameter glass
tube, a micro-plasma is useful. We have developed a new method for producing a micro-plasma in order to apply to the surface treatment and
micro-plasma CVD on the inner wall surface of a micro-glass tube at atmospheric pressure. The plasma is produced by using a coaxial microelectrode to which RF impulse is applied. We have elucidated fundamental characteristics of the discharge and optimized the electrode
configuration. We find that breakdown voltage can be decreased with a decrease in the diameter of the inner electrode. We also clarified the
effect of gas species and flow rate on the discharge.
D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Micro-plasma; Atmospheric pressure discharge; RF impulse discharge
1. Introduction
Recently, plasma technology is one of the key tools in
various fields such as the environment, medical treatment,
various materials processing, decompositions of exhaust
gas, and ozone processing [1]. The plasma is also useful in
light source technology such as a plasma display and a back
light source of liquid-crystal display. In the plasma display
technology, it is required to produce a micro-plasma
efficiently. Moreover, in the ultra-fine processing technology, it will be necessary to produce small size plasma [2].
Therefore, the research on the micro-plasma is quite
important for establishing small size processing.
Atmospheric pressure plasmas provide several advantages compared to the well-established low-pressure plasmas. For the operation of atmospheric pressure plasmas, no
vacuum equipment is required, thus they can be operated at
very low costs and may easily be integrated into in-line
processes. Because of short electron mean free path less
than approximately 0.1 mm, atmospheric pressure dis-
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 22 795 7113; fax: +81 22 263 9374.
E-mail address: iizuka@ecei.tohoku.ac.jp (S. Iizuka).
0040-6090/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tsf.2005.08.034
Y. Tanaka, S. Iizuka / Thin Solid Films 506 507 (2006) 436 439
437
2. Experimental
Experimental setup consists of a glass tube, inner and
outer electrodes as shown in Fig. 1. Inner diameter of glass
tube is 800 Am. Diameter of the inner electrode is varied in
the range within 700 Am and that of the outer one is also
varied in the range of 1 3 mm. The shape of the inner
electrode has two types, i.e. rod-type and tube-type. In order
to apply our micro-discharge system to the actual CVD
processing in small glass tubes, the material gas has to be
supplied either from the inside of the inner tube electrode or
from the space between the glass and the inner rod
electrode. For this reason we have investigated the
characteristics of the discharge using the tube- and rod-type
inner electrodes. The outer electrode is grounded, while RF
impulse with pulse width of 10 As and variable repetition
period of 0.1 1.0 kHz is applied to the inner electrode.
Usually, the repetition frequency is fixed at 3.5 kHz.
In order to produce a plasma only inside the glass tube at
low applied voltage we investigate the characteristics of
plasma discharge by changing the experimental conditions
such as distance between the electrodes, applied voltage,
shape of electrodes, and repeating frequency of RF impulse.
The electrode configuration is optimized to get a wide
voltage range of operation. We also investigate the influence
of gas species and flow rate on the discharge. Here, the gas
is supplied through the inside of the inner electrode.
Discharge structure is also observed by CCD cameras under
the different applied voltage.
Fig. 2. The typical cross-sectional images of the discharge for the cases of
weak discharge and uniform glow discharge.
438
Y. Tanaka, S. Iizuka / Thin Solid Films 506 507 (2006) 436 439
Fig. 4. The numerical calculation of electric field distribution [V/m] for the
same voltage applied (10 kV) for inner electrode diameters (a) 0.6 mm and
(b) 0.3 mm.
Fig. 6. The breakdown voltage as a function of (a) gas pressure and (b) gas
flow rate. (Outer electrode diameter is 1 mm and repeating frequency of the
RF impulse is 3.5 kHz).
Y. Tanaka, S. Iizuka / Thin Solid Films 506 507 (2006) 436 439
for four cases of inner electrode shapes (tube and rod) and
inner electrode diameters (0.3 mm and 0.7 mm). Even when
the shape of inner electrode is changed, only little difference
appears between the breakdown voltages for the rod and
tube types. This implied the importance of the electric field
at the outer edge of the inner electrode.
439
4. Summary
3.2. Characteristics of the discharge
The property of the discharge may be affected by species
and flow rate of working gas flowing through the microglass tube. Therefore, we intend to investigate the influence
of species and flow rate of working gas on the discharge.
Here, we employ Ar and N2 as dilution gas and compare the
effects on the discharge. Here, we used an outer electrode of
1 mm in diameter at the electrode distance of 7 mm. N2 is
quite popular for nitride processing.
Fig. 6(a) shows the breakdown voltage as a function of
gas pressure for four cases of inner electrode diameters (0.4
mm and 0.7 mm) and gas species (Ar and N2). In all cases,
the breakdown voltage is gradually increased with an
increase in the gas pressure. In case of Ar, the breakdown
voltage is lower than that of N2 in the whole pressure range.
Moreover, almost no difference appears between the breakdown voltages for the inner electrodes of 0.4 mm and 0.7
mm in diameter. Since Ar is mono-atom, there is little
dissociation and excitation loss. This may cause lower
breakdown voltage compared to that of N2.
The breakdown voltage as a function of gas flow rate is
shown in Fig. 6(b) for four cases of inner electrode
diameters (0.4 mm and 0.7 mm) and gas species (Ar and
N2). Even when the gas flow rate is increased, the
breakdown voltage is almost constant in all cases. In our
case, the plasma produced locally at the tip of the inner
electrode is immediately lost on the inner wall surface of
glass tube. This particle loss might be quite dominant.
Moreover, the gas flow velocity is less than 2.6 m/s and the
length of electrodes is longer than the interelectrode gap.
Therefore, the ignition voltage of the discharge is not so
influenced by the gas flow unless the gas flow rate is too
large [11]. In addition, a similar result has also been reported
[8]. This property is desirable in the practical application.
However, for a smaller long glass tube, the pressure gradient
along the tube will be serious in case of high flow-rate
operation. To avoid this problem we propose a low gas
We have developed a new method for producing a microplasma by using the coaxial micro-electrode system in order
to apply to the surface treatment and micro-plasma CVD on
the inner wall of a micro-glass tube at atmospheric pressure.
From the various situations of inner and outer electrodes of
the coaxial microelectrode system, it has been clarified that
the breakdown voltage decreases with an increase in the
strength of electric field at the tip of the inner electrode. It is
also clarified that the breakdown voltage of Ar is lower than
that of N2, and there is little difference between the
breakdown voltages against the inner electrode sizes. The
influence of gas flow-rate is also very small; therefore, the
breakdown voltage can be kept almost constant even when
the processing speed is further increased.
References
[1] Shigeru Kado, Yasushi Sekine, Tomohiro Nozaki, Ken Okazaki, Catal.
Today 89 (2004) 47.
[2] T. Yokoyama, M. Kogoma, T. Moriwaki, S. Ozaki, J. Phys. D: Appl.
Phys. 23 (1990) 1125.
[3] C. Gesner, V. Bartels, T. Betker, U. Matucha, Cristina Penache, C.-P.
Klages, Thin Solid Films 459 (2004) 118.
[4] R. Prat, Y.J. Koh, Y. Babukutty, M. Kogoma, S. Okazaki, M. Kodama,
Polymer 41 (2000) 7355.
[5] Y. Uchikawa, S. Sugimoto, K. Kuwahara, H. Fujiyama, H. Kuwahara,
Surf. Coat. Technol. 112 (1999) 185.
[6] M. Kogoma, S. Okazaki, K. Tanaka, T. Inomata, Thin Solid Films 386
(2001) 200.
[7] H. Fujiyama, Y. Tokitu, Y. Uchikawa, K. Kuwahara, K. Miyake, H.
Kuwahara, A. Doi, Surf. Coat. Technol. 98 (1998) 1467.
[8] J.G. Kang, H.S. Kim, S.W. Ahn, H.S. Uhm, Surf. Coat. Technol. 171
(2003) 144.
[9] Y.H. Kim, Y.H. Choi, J.K. Park, W.T. Ju, K.H. Peak, Y.S. Hwang,
Surf. Coat. Technol. 174 (2003) 535.
[10] J. Reece Roth, Industrial Plasma Engineering: Volume 1. Principles,
Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol, 1995, p. 237.
[11] Y.P. Raizer, Gas Discharge Physics, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1991,
p. 209.