Deposition of nano-sized metal-oxide using inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) technique for gas sensors applications

Summary form only given, as follows. We propose a unique single-source sol-gel ICP-CVD (inductively-coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition) system to synthesize nano-scale metal-oxide materials as sensing layers on silicon for fabrication into gas sensors. We intend to compare our results with the existing techniques such as sol-gel, RF sputtering. Our ICP-CVD system has an inductive couple matching at 13.56 MHz and the capability of sustaining up to 2 kW of RF power. The chemical precursor is injected into the system in vapor phase (in a controlled manner) by a liquid injection system. A Langmuir probe is installed inside the ICP system to provide reliable characterization and modeling for the ICP system. A few DC biased silicon grids are assembled at some desirable distances from the plasma column in order to extract and direct the flow of ions for a uniform deposition of nano-sized metal-oxide ions on to the silicon substrate. In this paper, preliminary results of the deposited film´s material properties of tin-oxide will be characterized as a function of ICP power, chamber pressure, gas chemistry, gas flow rate, substrate temperature, and DC bias grid configurations. Modeling and simulation of the deposition system will be presented.