T. Izaki*, K. Terashima and T. Yoshida

Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science
Graduate School and Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
Izaki@plasma.mm.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Recently, the mezzo/nano-scale technology becomes of great interest in both scientific and engineering fields. In nanometer range, unique phenomena such as the quantum effect is observed, which could never occur in macroscopic world. In technology, miniaturization of plasma leads to not only development of novel processing but also exploration of new scientific fields. So, the main purpose of our research is to explore the generation of the microscopic plasma. For the first step, we sucessfully generated the microscopic plasma using the STM technique [1].

In this study, we present the DC plasma generation with the 5m gap electrode fabricated by lithography. The electrode was made of tungsten sputtered on Si2 and etched by ICP plasma with gas mixture of CH4, the plasma generation with such electrodes hasn't yet been reported. We confirmed that the Pashen's law could be extended to the gap as narrow as 5 mm. The results of probe method and optical emission spectroscopy will also be reported.

[1] K.Terashima, L.Howald, H.Haefke and H.Guntherodt, Thin Solid Films 281-282 (1996)