Microstructural Analysis of Copper Foil Etched and Annealed in ECR Plasma Reactor

Microstructural analysis of commercially available cold-rolled polycrystalline copper foil, etched and annealed in an in-house developed Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PE-CVD) reactor, have been carried out using x-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. The annealing experiments were carried out under a vacuum environment, keeping the working pressure of the reactor at 50×10 -3 mbar, for three different time spans of 30 mins, 45 mins and 1 hour at 823 K (550 °C) and 923 K (650 °C) respectively in presence of hydrogen plasma. The XRD studies reveal the significance of annealing time at two different temperatures for the determination of physical and microstructural parameters such as the average grain size and micro-strain in copper lattice by Williamson-Hall (W-H) method.