Linear Plasma Sources for Large Area Film Deposition: A Brief Review

By utilization of different excitation power sources, linear plasma sources can be differentiated into DC, RF, VHF, microwave and dual frequency types. Through installing several linear plasma sources in parallel or adopting the so-called roll-to-roll (air-to-air) process, scale uniform linear plasma sources were realized and successfully applied to the deposition of large area uniform dielectric thin films. Furthermore, the magnetic field system can effectively reduce the recombination losses on the wall of the vacuum chamber and enhance the plasma density. Linear plasma sources with approximately one square meter deposition area with the plasma density of 10 ¹¹ cm ⁻³ have been developed, some of which have been used for the deposition of dielectric layers and large area plasma etching.