The Plasma Etch is located in room 20b of the ASTeCC building. It is useful for plasma etching and cleaning of substrates. It is a microwave excited plasma source.
The Center does provide Oxygen, Argon, and Nitrogen gases. Any other gases are the responsibility of the user and subject to UK safety regulations.
More Info
Plasma etchers can operate in several modes by adjusting the parameters of the plasma. Ordinary plasma etching operates between 0.1 and 5 Torr. (This unit of pressure, commonly used in vacuum engineering, equals approximately 133.3 pascals.) The plasma produces energetic free radicals, neutrally charged, that react at the surface of the wafer. Since neutral particles attack the wafer from all angles, this process is isotropic.
The source gas for the plasma usually contains small molecules rich in chlorine or fluorine. For instance, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) etches silicon and aluminium, and trifluoromethane etches silicon dioxide and silicon nitride. A plasma containing oxygen is used to oxidize ("ash") photoresist and facilitate its removal.
Ion milling, or sputter etching, uses lower pressures, often as low as 10-4 Torr (10 mPa). It bombards the wafer with energetic ions of noble gases, often Ar+, which knock atoms from the substrate by transferring momentum. Because the etching is performed by ions, which approach the wafer approximately from one direction, this process is highly anisotropic. On the other hand, it tends to display poor selectivity. Reactive-ion etching (RIE) operates under conditions intermediate between sputter and plasma etching (between 10-3 and 10-1 Torr). Deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) modifies the RIE technique to produce deep, narrow features.
"Etching (microfabrication)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 30 Jan 2008, 13:22 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 Feb 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Etching_%28microfabrication%29&oldid=187910890>.