Neutralization of Electrical Static Charge under High Vacuum by Plasma Flood Gun

A plasma flood gun (PFG) has been developed for NISSIN Implanter “iG5” [1] and “iG6” for Gen5.5 and 6.0 FPD processing under high vacuum. This PFG contains a multi-cusp type arc chamber with a filament cathode. It generates the ions and electrons using a low feed Xenon (Xe) gas. In this paper, we investigated the neutralization of positive and negative charges on an insulator by the PFG under high vacuum conditions. The potential of the Al sheet on the insulator plate which was raised up to +1 or −1 kV in advance was neutralized to −0.005 kV in the 0.3 and 1.2 seconds by the PFG, respectively. We also reported the neutralization of the positive and negative charge pairs on the front and back surfaces of an insulator by the PFG.