Refine
Year of publication
- 2010 (1)
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Language
- English (1) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (1)
Keywords
- Molekülkinetik (1) (remove)
Institute
Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy in the mid InfraRed spectral range (IR-TDLAS) has been applied to investigate the behaviour of CF, CF2 and C2F4 species produced in pulsed CF4/H2 capacitively coupled radio frequency plasmas (13.56 MHz CCP). This experimental technique was shown to be suitable for temporally resolved measurements of the absolute number density of the target molecules in the studied fluorocarbon discharges. The temporal resolution of about 20…40 ms typically achieved in the standard data acquisition mode (“stream mode”) was sufficient for the real-time measurements of CF2 and C2F4, but not of CF whose kinetics was observed to be much faster. Therefore, a more sophisticated approach (“burst mode”) providing a temporal resolution of 0.94 ms was established and successfully applied to CF density measurements. In order to enable the TDLAS measurements of the target species, preliminary investigations on their spectroscopic data had been carried out. In particular, pure C2F4 has been produced in laboratory by means of vacuum thermal decomposition (pyrolysis) of polytetrafluoroethylene and used as a reference gas. Therefore, an absorption structure consisting of several overlapping C2F4 lines around 1337.11 cm-1 was selected and carefully calibrated, which provided the first absolute measurements of the species by means of the applied experimental technique. The absolute number density traces measured for CF, CF2 and C2F4 in the studied pulsed plasmas were then analysed, in which two differential balance equations were proposed for each of the species to describe their behaviour during both “plasma on” and “plasma off” phases. Analytical solutions of the balance equations were used to fit the experimental data and hence to deduce important information on the kinetics of the studied molecules. In particular, during the “plasma off” phase, the self-recombination of CF2 (CF2 + CF2 (+M) → C2F4 (+M)) was found to be dominant in the kinetics of the radical, but of minor importance for C2F4 production. A rapid consumption of CF observed within 7…25 ms after switching off the plasma was explained mainly by volume reaction with other species (most likely with CF3), whereas diffusion of the radical towards the reactor walls followed by sticking on the surfaces was found to contribute only at relatively low pressures (<10 Pa). Under certain discharge conditions, measured CF density traces exhibited significant overshoots in 50…150 ms after the plasma ignition, which had not been known from literature before. The electron impact fragmentation of C2F4 was shown to be essential for CF production at the beginning of the “plasma on” phase and therefore for formation of the observed CF density overshoots. Finally, the broad band FTIR spectroscopy was applied in order to better characterize the gas phase composition of the studied plasmas. Thus, absorption bands of CF4, C2F4, C2F6, C3F8, CHF3 and HF stable molecules were detected in the FTIR spectra recorded between 400 and 4000 cm-1. The spectra were then successfully deconvolved and the absolute concentration of the detected species was estimated. In particular, the absolute number density of C2F4 obtained from the FTIR measurements was in a good agreement with that achieved by means of the IR-TDLAS technique. The work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre Transregio 24 “Fundamentals of Complex Plasmas” (SFB/TRR24, project section B5).