Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) utilizes the electromagnetic excitation of vapor phase precursors to generate a cold plasma and induce reactions that lead to the formation of solid thin films. Due to the reactive nature of the process, a variety of precursors, including reagents that are generally considered chemically inert, can be activated to derive film-forming species. As such, PECVD is a versatile technique that has found many uses in biorelated applications. Importantly, PECVD presents a unique set of processing considerations that can have a significant impact on resulting film material structure and properties.These include the plasma configuration, plasma chemistry, and plasma electric field, which can influence, as respective examples, the photocatalytic activity and antimicrobial efficacy of titanium dioxide, the hybridization cycling stability of DNA or stem cell differentiation on ultrananocrystalline diamond, and the alignment and placement of carbon nanofibers as neural electrode arrays. These examples further illustrate the possibility and utility of PECVD in creating 3D structures beyond the conventional 2D planar thin films typically associated with these techniques.