Comparative Study of Yttrium Oxide Film Deposition: Low-Temperature Microwave-Excited Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet with Mist Additions

Yttrium oxide (Y₂O₃) film is one of the promising coating materials to prevent from process chamber wall erosion by the plasma process. For that reason, advanced ceramics are widely used as plasma-facing materials including Y₂O₃ due to their high resistance and chemical stability [1]. Furthermore, there is an apparent interest to investigate atmospheric pressure plasma as a coating technology due to the easy usage of industrial lines such as the semiconductor manufacturing process. Additionally, atmospheric pressure plasma allows the organic solution for deposition [2].

To deal with corrosion-erosion issues, it is necessary to utilize a Y₂O₃ film with a thick and high density to meet the requirements of the complex structure inside the chamber for this application. Cost-effective methods are also essential in the production of semiconductors.

We have compared the vaporizer method with the simpler cost-efficient bubbling method using the microwave-excited atmospheric pressure plasma jet (MW-APPJ) with an organic precursor solution. The deposited films and deposition processes are also confirmed by optical emission spectroscopy (OES), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and film profiler. The achieved results were a maximum deposition rate of ~0.4 um/min for the Y₂O₃ film using the vaporizer method and a maximum deposition rate of ~0.8 um/min using the bubbling method.