Oxygen plasma etching of hydrocarbon-like polymers: Part II experimental validation

International audienceThe objective in Part II is to verify whether the model developed in Part I for the etching of polymers in oxygen plasmas can apply to all types of polymers. The experimental parametric study of the etching of different polymers in oxygen plasmas and under distinct operating conditions confirms that their etching kinetics follow the general laws derived from the modeling: 1) under identical operating conditions, the etch rates of polymer films with equal carbon concentration are the same and 2) the activation energies for spontaneous etching are shown to be effectively independent of the plasma operating conditions, and their values, common to all polymers, are 0.76 ± 0.05 eV for CO2 desorption and 0.40 ± 0.05 eV for CO desorption