Plasma and ion etching

Etching has been used to reveal structures in polymer fibers [381, 382], polymer blends [383, 

and in bulk polymers, such as PET [385] and PE [386]. Periodic structures were seen to develop on argon plasma etched, oriented materials, such as nylon and PET, and fine scale structures were observed for etched polyamide [387], PET [27, 388], and aramid fibers [387], which showed ripple structures transverse to the fiber axis. Goodhew [389-392] discussed the 

Mechanical strength of cold plasma treated PET fibers were shown to degrade (SEM) after cold plasma treatment [402]. Single fibers were 

Buck and Fuhrmann [410] modified the spin casting film procedure by dropping the solution of a diblock copolymer onto an already rotating substrate, precleaned with an air plasma at 100 W for 1 min. They used air plasma for selective etching of the PMMA microphase in the PS/PMMA film, at a power of 40 W in steps of 5 s, keeping the sample in vacuum for 15 min after each etch period. Blend morphology and clay dispersion has been successfully studied by AFM of samples polished and physically and chemically etched, the latter by immersion in 

The etching study was conducted to complement ultrathin sectioning of high modulus oriented fibers [413]. Representative results of the plasma etching experiment are shown in the secondary electron images (SEI) (Fig. 4.25). Glass fibers and amorphous polyester film were used as controls. Oriented PET and aramid 

A major difficulty in plasma and ion etching is that textures, such as steps, cones and holes, can be produced which are artifacts and which do not reveal the microstructure. Of all the methods of specimen preparation, etching is the most prone to such artifacts and thus image interpretation is very difficult. Etching preparations are useful for comparison with structures formed during other specimen preparation processes, especially microtomy. Such complementary studies are essential to the determination of the true polymer structure. 

Factors known to limit artifacts in etched polymers are  

Goodhew [189-192] discussed the formation of large scale structures (0.1-1 jum) perpendicular to the drawn fiber axis upon ion etching carbon fibers. He attributed these structures to be derived from the original surface striations. Such structures were not formed on glass fibers which 

There is no one general method that is applicable for either ion or plasma etching polymers. Etch times are generally short, on the order of 5-30 min, as it is important not to leave a residue on the sample surface. Rotation of the specimen and the target and cooling of the ion gims are factors 

The etching study was conducted to complement ultrathin sectioning of high modulus 

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B4.2 Dry etching of GaN and related compounds B2 High-Density Plasma Reactive Ion Etching... 

Plasma Etching, Table 2 Materials and reactive gases used for plasma/reactive ion etching in Si technology... 

Chemical etching is accomplished by degradation and removal of one of the components from the sample. Classical techniques are etching with plasma and ions. Both these techniques tend to produce artefacts. Acids, alkalis and -alkyl amines are used to etch polyesters. Nitric acid degrades the amorphous... 

There are two general categories of etching chemical attack or bombardment with charged particles as in plasma and ion beam etching. Chemical attack can be further divided into several categories, including dissolution, which implies the removal of whole molecules of a material as it dissolves acids and other chemicals. Solvent extraction with xylene was used for the study of PE [294] however, dissolution is not recommended due to the artifacts that... 

The first reported use of NIL was in 1995 by Chou et al. who fabricated 25 nm diameter dots with a 120 nm period by thermal nanoimprint lithography (TNIL). In their work, a thermoplastic material, poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), was used as the moldable material followed by oxygen plasma reactive ion etch (RIE) process to expose the substrate. The deposition of titanium/gold via evaporation and lift-off to yield an array of individually isolated titanium/gold dots was achieved with success. Figure 2 shows the imprinted PMMA template and the titanium/gold dot array after metallization and lift-off processes. 

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