Development of a combinatorial atmospheric pressure cold plasma processor

Low-temperature plasma can be generated under atmospheric pressure by applying an RF (13.56 MHz) voltage between parallel electrodes, the surfaces of which are preferably covered with an insulator. Applications of this atmospheric pressure cold plasma include thin film deposition, chemical synthesis, etching, resist-ashing, surface treatment, and sterilization. For seeking further improvement of the system and more applications, we have developed a combinatorial atmospheric pressure cold plasma generator to fabricate composition spread thin films by synchronizing the variation of feeding gas ratio with the substrate stage motion. This system can be extended to fabricating a variety of combinatorial libraries by controlling other parameters in the operation such as the gas flow rate, the RF power, substrate temperature, and the treatment time. The utility of this combinatorial plasma process has been demonstrated with the plasma copolymerization of CO2 with ethylene to fix CO2 into the plasma polymerized film in the form of ester linkage. # 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved