Rapid fabrication of precision surfaces - A new paradigm

摘要

Reactive Atom Plasma (RAP?) processing of substrates is a new technique developed to increase productivity of the manufacturing step by orders of magnitude without sacrificing precision. This is made possible by a paradigm shift in the approach to material removal and/or deposition. Instead of using iterative abrasive processes that are required to remove damage from prior iterations without adding significant amounts of damage/stress/strain in the current iteration, RAP? relies on chemical etching of the underlying material. Further productivity enhancements are made possible by the use of a sub-aperture atmospheric-pressure plasma source. A large number of manufacturing problems can be solved by suitable modifications to the chemistry and/or processing parameters.