Etching processes of fluorine-containing process gases
Plasma processes that use fluorine-containing gases for cleaning, structuring or coating surfaces are widely used in industry today and, due to a lack of suitable air purification technologies, are emitted into the atmosphere as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs are very harmful to the climate due to their global warming potential, which is many times greater than that of CO2.
In order to safely avoid these emissions in the future, the project aims to develop a new type of plasma system for fluorine-processed etching and coating processes that neither consumes nor emits HFCs as process gases. To this end, the project is pursuing a novel, closed-loop plasma process in which the reactive fluorine compounds are generated from solids, used for surface treatment and then separated from the process gas in a completely reusable manner.
The work at Furtwangen University in the sub-project focuses on researching specific etching processes of fluorine-containing process gases, AI-supported control of the process atmosphere using the optical plasma spectra, determining substrate-specific process requirements and evaluating plasma-etched surfaces.02
