Argon
Noble gas with a high natural frequency (almost 1% of the atmosphere of the earth), which is often used as a protective gas due to its complete chemical inertness. In plasma cleaning and plasma activation, it is often used as a process gas which cannot chemically react with the substrate but is suitable for removing contaminations (⇒micro-sandblasting effect), for anisotropic physical etching (ion etching IE) and for generation of radicals on organic polymers. eignet.