Chemical vapour deposition enhanced by atmospheric microwave plasmas: a large-scale industrial process or the next nanomanufacturing tool?

This paper describes several specific aspects of atmospheric plasma deposition carried out with a microwave resonant cavity. Deposition over a wide substrate is first studied. We show that high deposition rates (several hundreds of μm h −1 ) are due to localization of fluxes on the substrate by convection when slightly turbulent flows are used. Next, we describe possible routes to localize deposition over a nanometre-sized area. Scaling down atmospheric plasma deposition is possible and two strategies to reach nanometre scales are described. Finally, we study self-organization of SiO 2 nanodots deposited by chemical vapour deposition at atmospheric pressure enhanced by an Ar–O 2 micro-afterglow operating at high temperature (>1200 K). When the film being deposited is thin enough (∼500 nm) nanodots are obtained and they can be assembled into threads to create patterned surfaces. When the coating becomes thicker (∼1 µm), and for relatively high content in HMDSO, SiO 2 walls forming hexagonal cells are obtained.