Photoemission-assisted Discharge Plasma and Its Application for Carbon Electronics*

Artificial plasma is easily created in some controlled atmosphere by electric discharge with a high-power source. It is called discharge plasma. The plasma that is generated in dry process methods such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and sputtering is essential to the synthesis and processing of materials suitable to electronics or semiconductor engineering. As we can see in a plasma ball, however, the plasma is wandering, and its contour is vague. It is generally difficult to create plasma only at a desired site in the chamber with a couple of reproducible voltage and certain current density.Our group has been developing the photoemission-assisted plasma that can be created only in a designated area where vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light is irradiated. In this system, plentiful photoelectrons are generated in the VUV-irradiated area by the photo-electric effect and work as initial electrons. Due to this far different number of electrons in between the VUV-irradiated area and the other, discharge is preferred in the former area, and the plasma is created there only as a result.

In this talk, works in our group with the photoemission-assisted plasma are presened: nano-scale tailor-made synthesis of diaomond-like carbon (DLC) films for application to carbon electronics; atomic-scale control of graphene, and plasma confinement to explore a new gas-phase reaction field.