The Investigation Of A MEMS-based Micro Spectrum ICP Source

The Spectrometer is one of the essential devices that used for detecting the compositionof material. Miniaturization and integration are one of the important trend in the developmentof spectrometer. The ICP source is an important functional component of the spectrometer.During the miniaturization of spectrometer, researches on spectroscope and detection systemis much reported, but micro excitation source is reported only by Northeastern University ofAmerica, it has became a bottleneck of microspectrometer. So pursuing the newestinformation, investigating and studying on the miniature excitation source are urgent andtimely.The status and property of MEMS were described briefly. The advantages of MEMStechnology in the fabrication of micro ICP (mICP) source were summarized. In theMEMS-based mICP source, a planar spiral-shaped coil was adopted instead of the 3dimension coil, and two planar interdigital capacitors were used for resonance and impedancematching. Its power loss, gas consumption, volume and weight were far less than one percentof atmospheric pressure ICP source, it was also lower cost and convenient for massproduction.A planar mICP source was designed in this research, its structural design, fabricationprocess and ignition experimental technique were described in detail. The experimentalresults were also analysed. According to the experimental results, the mICP source couldignite and sustain the plasma at 13.56MHz, which is far lower than 100MHz~500MHzreported by reference abroad. Furthermore, the above mICP source was fabricated by PCBtechnology, which had the merits of low cost and simple process.The mICP source has potential to be used in miniaturization, portability andpopularization of the spectrometer as well as in analysis of space-exploration.