Mark Kushner | The Role of Plasma Modeling

“The Role of Plasma Modeling in the Innovation Cycle for Nanofabrication.”
Keynote Address at the 2016 LNF Users Symposium.
Abstract:
Device fabrication, from nano-scale transistors to MEMS accelerometers, relies on plasma materials processing steps – etching, deposition, passivation, cleaning, functionalization. Arguably, advances in these technologies, at least for commercial scale production, might not have progressed beyond that of the 1990s in the absence of plasma enabled device fabrication. The success of plasma processing has reduced many of these intricate and complex plasma-chemical procedures to daily practice. Devices are etched and coatings deposited at commodity volumes using commercial tools. This is an impressive success and the goal of technology development – reducing complexity to practice by placing tools into the hands of the users. In this success, the fundamental plasma reactions essential for fabricating advanced devices have also been shielded from the user. Now that atomic scale processing (e.g., ALE – atomic layer etching) is necessary to advance the state of the art, innovation requires that consideration of the fundamental plasma processes be part of the innovation cycle. In this talk, the role of first principles modeling and simulation of plasma materials processing in support of innovation will be discussed using examples from reactor and feature scaling modeling. The required advances in modeling as we move forward will be also be discussed.

Bio:
Mark J. Kushner received the BS and BA from the University of California-Los Angeles, and the MS and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology. He served on the staffs of national laboratories and in private industry before returning to academics. He is now with the University of Michigan as Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Prof. Kushner's research area is the modeling and simulation of the fundamentals and applications of low temperature plasmas. He is a Fellow of several societies and has received several awards for his research. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
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