DETECTION IN THE NANOMETER-SCALE OF PARTICLES GENERATED IN AN AR-SIH4RADIOFREQUENCY LOW-PRESSURE DISCHARGE

The underlying phenomena leading to particle formation and trapping in plasma reactors are extensively studied as they are involved as a maj or pollution in many technological areas including etching and thin fi lms deposition processes. Different aspects dealing with the particle formation in a low pressure radiofrequency (RF) discharge have been st udied and are reported in this paper. The first aspect concerns the pa rticle nucleation and growth. These particles are in general detected by light scattering. Nevertheless this method has clear limitations in terms of particles size. We developed a new powerful methode to detec t particles in the nanometer scale. The results obtained give informat ion on the first stage of the formation and growth process.