Plasma Materials

Abstract

Low pressure plasmas (LPP) for advanced materials synthesis have played a transformational role in various industries, such as coatings, the semiconductor industry, renewable energy, and liquid crystals displays (Lieberman and Lichtenberg, 2005). In applications of LLP to materials processing, producing or accelerating chemical reactions at the substrate’s surface immerses in the plasma can induce the production of new materials, modification, and etching of materials. The materials contacted by LPP depends on fluxes of neutrals, including ions, reactive species, electrons, and photons (Oehrlein and Hamaguchi, 2018). Atoms sputtered to form a solid target material by energetic ion bombardment generated by LLP may be deposited on the substrate. LLP exhibits its huge advantages in the deposition of high-quality coatings (e.g., high hardness and adhesion, high density, crystallinity, etc.) over large areas, while CAP has great potential in materials synthesis such as biomaterials and polymers (Dufay et al., 2020; Mattox and Mattox, 2003; Zhu et al., 2020). Applications of CAP in the synthesis or modification of various materials have been the subject of research efforts in the last two decades, through the exact physics underlying the interaction of plasmas with surfaces have yet to be fully determined (Alemán et al., 2018; Chang et al., 2020; Cvelbar et al., 2019; De Smet et al., 2018; Dong et al., 2020; Felix et al., 2017; Kehrer et al., 2020; Mariotti and Sankaran, 2011; Medvecká et al., 2018; Praveen et al., 2019). While the explicit focus on the underlying physics of CAP has decreased in recent years, research into new applications and implementations continues to be conducted (Adamovich et al., 2017). Multiple configurations have been used for materials modification and synthesis. Examples include DBD (Al-Maliki et al., 2018; Astafan et al., 2019; Dimitrakellis and Gogolides, 2018a; Gupta et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2017, 2013; Lang et al., 2018; Mertz et al., 2018; Pandiyaraj et al., 2019; Pavliñák et al., 2018; Shekargoftar et al., 2018; Snoeckx et al., 2015), plasma jet (Abuzairi et al., 2016; Arik et al., 2019; Bartis et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2015a, 2015b; Gerullis et al., 2018; Jurov et al., 2019; Kostov et al., 2014; Lee and Jeong, 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Park et al., 2019, 2018; Roth et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2016a, 2016b; Yáñez-Pacios and Martín-Martínez, 2018), plasma-initiated chemical vapor deposition (Loyer et al., 2018a, 2018b), plasma spraying (Ambardekar et al., 2018; Wallenhorst et al., 2018; Wen et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2015d), corona (Fabregat et al., 2017; Hawtof et al., 2019), glow discharge (Khlyustova et al., 2019b; Ouyang et al., 2017; Park et al., 2016; Pastor-Pérez et al., 2018; Peng et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2018a), and gliding arc discharge (Tiya-Djowe et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2015a, 2016). Remote methods of plasma treatment such as remote plasma oxidation have also been reported (Chen et al., 2018a; Luan and Oehrlein, 2018). Applications of CAP in materials processing can be distinguishing between the application of CAP for the modification of materials or material properties created through other means, and the wholesale formation of new materials from raw components. While certain applications combine both methods, the operational concerns for each vary. Further differentiation can be made between the synthesis of bulk material and the creation of nanoparticles, which is significant enough a subset of materials synthesis for a separate discussion.