RESUMO
The atmospheric pressure plasma polishing (APPP) is a novel precision machining technology. It performs the atom scale material removal based on low temperature plasma chemical reactions. As the machining process is chemical in nature, it avoids the surface/subsurface defects usually formed in conventional mechanical machining processes. APPP firstly introduces a capacitance coupled radio frequency (RF) plasma torch to generate reactive plasma and excite chemical reactions further. The removal process is a complicated integrating action which tends to be affected by many factors, such as the gas ratio, the RF power and so on. Therefore, to improve the machining quality, all the aspects should be considered and studied, to establish the foundation for further model building and theoretical analysis. The atomic emission spectroscopy analysis was used to study the process characteristics. A commercial micro spectrometer was used to collect the spectrograms under different parameters, by comparing which the influence of the RF power and gas ratio was initially studied. The analysis results indicate that an increase in RF power results in a higher removal rate within a certain range. The gas ratio doesn't show obvious influence on the removal rate and surface roughness in initial experiments, but the element compositions detected by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy technology on the machined surfaces under different ratios really indicate distinct difference. Then the theoretical analysis revealed the corresponding electron transition orbits of the excited reactive fluorine atoms, which is necessary for further mechanism research and apparatus improvement. Then the initial process optimization was made based on the analysis results, by which the Ra 0.6 nm surface roughness and 32 mm3 x min(-1) removal rate were achieved on silicon wafers.
