Generation of air microplasma jet and its application to the local etching of polyimide films

Recently, atmospheric-pressure microplasma jets have been proposed for the local etching, deposition and surface modification based in H. Yoshiki et al. (2003), T. Kikuchi et al. (2004) and T. Ideno and T. Ichiki (2005). Atmospheric-pressure microplasma has the following features: non-thermal equilibrium plasma is generated due to the microscale volume, high density radicals are obtained and plasma processing can be carried out in the free space, i.e., without a plasma chamber. In general, He or Ar as the carrier gas is used for the stable generation of the atmospheric-pressure plasma. In this paper, low-power driven air microplasma jet (Air μPJ) using a surgical needle is proposed. The Air μPJ is applied to the local etching of polyimide films.