Experimental and Simulation Studies of Gas Phase Reaction in Planar Microwave Plasma

It is necessary to supply nitrogen radical fluxes in high uniformity to form high-quality nitrogen-incorporated films. An experiment on gas phase chemical reaction using a microwave discharge device with a multi-slotted planar antenna is performed. We use a three-dimensional simulation code, which calculates wave propagation in plasma obtained by the finite difference time domain method, power deposition, and plasma transport using a fluid model. The code can reproduce experimental results to a large extent. The code is capable of calculating several types of gas-phase reaction of neutral species. The results of both the experiment and the simulation show that the uniformity of the density distribution of nitrogen radicals strongly depends on the uniformity of the plasma.