The charging of dust particles in the range of very high discharge frequencies

Capacitively coupled plasmas are widely used in a variety of thin film etching and deposition applications. The studies and experimental investigations in this field have shown that increasing frequencies above the conventional 13.56 MHz results in the increase of the deposition rate and at the same time minimizes the film damage. On the other hand dust particles are often present in the plasma reactors as a sputtering or nucleation product and may influence the manufacturing. Therefore, controlling the behavior of dust particles is essential for improving of the manufacturing techniques in the low temperature plasma processing.