AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Vacuum Technology Tuesday Sessions
       Session VT-TuP

Paper VT-TuP11
Improvement of Materials Surface Properties by RF Glow Discharge Treatment

Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 4:00 pm, Room Exhibit Hall C&D

Session: Vacuum Technology Poster Session
Presenter: T.B. Huang, Tsinghua University, P.R. China
Authors: T.B. Huang, Tsinghua University, P.R. China
X. Chen, Tsinghua University, P.R. China
X.Q. Tian, Tsinghua University, P.R. China
L.Z. Cha, Tsinghua University, P.R. China
Correspondent: Click to Email
Glow discharge treatment is not only an effective means to remove the absorbed gases and impurity, but also an important tool to improve the materials surface properties in vacuum and electronic applications. Anyway, it can shorten the pump-down time when the system or devices are not permitted to carry out high temperature baking. Especially, the production of the longeval ultra-high vacuum environment is difficult in small volume so that it is a desirable means of glow discharge treatment. In the electronic applications, the rough surface is not desirable due to unexpected discharge occurring. Then, it is necessary to use some surface treating means, such as glow discharge treatment, which could make materials surface smooth in a certain scale. For some insulator, RF discharge is a good solution. However, special ultra high vacuum and electronic applications enlarge the difficulties of glow discharge treatment process. For meeting the complicated demands, its influence on materials surface properties is necessary to investigate. The RF glow discharge treatment experiments have been carried out for improving the materials surface properties in vacuum and electronic applications. The surface morphology and outgassing rate were studied under different glow discharge treatment. The key process parameters were the cleaning power, pressure, time, and so on. It could be known by experiments that the roughness of materials surface varied due to glow discharge treating process. The experimental results revealed that the outgassing rates of different gases decrease due to glow discharge treatment. The clean and smooth surface in nanometer scale for materials was obtained after the glow discharge treatment. The evacuating properties for materials became better due to the glow discharge treatment. Different bombardment ions were applied in the experiments, and the outgassing trend induced by ion bombardment was discussed in this paper.