ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some basic physical processes from the field of materials science that are of importance in plasma-processing applications. Plasma processing has found increasingly widespread industrial applications because it can produce unique effects of commercial value that can be obtained in no other way. In considering plasma–surface interactions, it is useful to be aware of the units and size scales involved. Plasmas are capable of producing, through electron–neutral collisions and chemical reactions in the plasma, several kinds of energetic active neutral species capable of interacting strongly with a surface. Several processes may occur when an incident ion, atom, or molecule sticks to a surface. Particles in the outermost monolayers covering a surface are loosely bound and are generally easy to drive off by heating or bombarding the surface with energetic ions or electrons. Industrial partially ionized, Lorentzian plasmas produce, almost entirely by electron–neutral impact ionization, charged particles that may be accelerated to surrounding surfaces by sheath electric fields.
