Design and fabrication of the microplasma reactor for maskless scanning plasma etching

A novel maskless micro-nano plasma etching system based on parallel probe actuation is proposed. The advantages of this system are high etching rate, high fidelity, simple-structure, and flexible to fabricate various material. As a key component of the system, a microplasma reactor of metal-dielectric-metal sandwich structure with inverted, square pyramidal hollow cathode is designed and successfully fabricated with good quality. Experiment results show that the devices can discharge stably, and the V-I characteristics of the microdischarge at 4 Kpa~16 KPa of Ar and SF₆/Ar gas mixture are also presented. The results of this paper may lay a foundation for further maskless scanning plasma etching.