Low-damage plasma processing of polymers for development of organic-inorganic flexible devices

Plasma generation and control technologies for processing of polymers have been developed with multiple low-inductance antenna (LIA) units, as a promising candidate for next-generation processing of hybrid flexible devices. Properties of argon-oxygen mixture plasmas sustained with multiple LIA units have been investigated in terms of ion energies bombarding onto polymer surface. Ion energy distribution at the sheath edge of the argon-oxygen mixture plasmas showed considerable suppression of ion energies as small as or less than 10 eV. Effects of the plasma exposure onto polymers have been examined using hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HXPES) in terms of chemical bonding states of the polymer surface and the interface between polymer and silicon film.