Principles of Plasma Discharges and Materials Processing, 2nd Edition

MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 30 • NOVEMBER 2005 899 Principles of Plasma Discharges and Materials Processing, 2nd Edition Michael A. Lieberman and Allan J. Lichtenberg (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) 757 pages; $115.00 ISBN 0-471-72001-1 The authors have done an excellent job of clearly explaining the different nomenclature used in plasma processing, with the meaning of the symbols and constants commonly encountered. The book appears to be aimed at graduate students and has an extensive mathematical treatment of plasma processes. As the authors have mentioned, much of the content of the book is based on the courses they have taught over the years. Their focus has been on semiconductor thin-film applications for the microelectronics processing industries and this has been well covered. The use of problem sets at the end of each chapter is very useful from an academic perspective. It is very well written for those who specialize in this field although too detailed for average practitioners in the field. It would have been useful for practitioners if it offered examples of the effect of process parameters on real issues (e.g., preferential etch rates between metal and photoresist layers at different lateral dimensions). It is recognized that the geometry of the particular vacuum chamber is crucial to derive this; nevertheless, data could have been collected from published literature with appropriate acknowledgment and references. The authors seem to have neglected coverage of plasma technology as related to the use of ion beams, namely, ionbeam etching, reactive ion-beam etching, chemical-assisted ion-beam etching, and ion-beam deposition. These processes are extensively used in the manufacture of multilayer device structures used in the disk drive industry and should have been included as a separate chapter. As the demand for data storage—for example, personal handheld devices—increases, there is a concomitant need to keep the size of the gadgets small. This in turn puts a tremendous demand on the physical size of the hard drives, thereby making the manufacture of read and write heads challenging. The role of ion-beam technology and the understanding of the plasma behavior to focus these ion beams for etching and deposition also become very important. Overall, this is a good book for an academic course that will provide the foundation to senior-level and graduate students inclined to pursue a career in plasma engineering and technology. Reviewer: Sudhi Sant is president and founder of Twin Technologies Inc., Garden Grove, California and has over 15 years of thin-film deposition and etching experience covering a range of applications.