A new tool for material processing
The Mawson Institute, in collaboration with the Universities of Illinois and Liverpool is working on a $1.3M project, with a further $1M of support from the State Government, to develop and perfect the use of mirco-plasma discharge fabrication in silicon for material processing.
Plasma is a key surface modification technology, but has to date, been restricted in utility to providing uniform (homogeously) modified surfaces. Local, non-uniform treatments can be achieved but only through multi-step, sequential masking processes, which are both time-consuming and costly. Development in this area is a "hot" topic at the moment as the scaling-down of plasma discharges to the micron scale could provide a new, high-throughput platform technology for parallel surface modification. The project will see plasma sources scaled-down from 300 microns to 10 microns.
This three-year project is funded in Australia by the Department of Education, Science and Training and by research councils in the US and UK. The aim is to develop a platform technology applicable across a wide range of industrial sectors.
Microcavity plasma array mounted within a prototypereactor vessel (Liverpool University) |