17 March 2014

Meaglow’s hollow cathode plasma source reduces oxygen contamination by orders of magnitude

Meaglow Ltd of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, which produces migration-enhanced afterglow epitaxy equipment and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) accessories, has announced what it claims is a breakthrough in semiconductor production.

As computer chips become smaller, advanced production techniques such as atomic layer deposition (ALD) have become more important for depositing thin layers of material. Unfortunately, ALD of some materials has been prone to contamination from the plasma sources used, says the firm. Meaglow has developed a hollow cathode plasma source that has reduced oxygen contamination by orders of magnitude, allowing the reproducible deposition of semiconductor materials with improved quality.

This has been reported in a recent publication of oxygen-reduction figures for the hollow cathode plasma source supplied last year to the group of professor Necmi Biyikli of the Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology at Turkey’s Bilkent University (Journal of Materials Chemistry C (J. Mater. Chem. C 2 (2014) 2123)). The plasma source was used to upgrade their existing ALD system by replacing an inductively coupled plasma source. The results show a reduction in oxygen content of orders of magnitude. There is also a marked improvement in material quality, says Meaglow. These results render the older inductively coupled plasma sources obsolete for many applications.

Meaglow is seeking other customers interested in improving the material quality of their ALD and other plasma-grown nitride layers. The hollow cathode plasma technology can also scale to large deposition areas. The plasma source can be used to retrofit existing systems or can be integrated with equipment manufacturers, says Meaglow. It can also be utilized in a applications including MBE and LPMOCVD.

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