Patent ID: 8632688

Claim:
A plasma processing method comprising: a step of placing a wafer having a film to be processed on a surface thereof on a sample stage disposed in a processing chamber within a reactor constituted of a vacuum vessel; a step of forming plasma in the processing chamber by supplying an electric field in the processing chamber from above; and a step of processing the wafer by using the plasma while supplying power from a radio frequency power supply to electrodes disposed in the sample stage via a matching box, the step of processing the wafer comprising: a step of detecting characteristic data including light emission intensity of the plasma, magnitude of time variation of the light emission intensity of the plasma, a matching position of the matching box, and a change of a value of a voltage of the radio frequency power supplied to the electrodes with respect to a value change of the power detected in advance by varying power of the electric field to a plurality of values during processing executed on a wafer which is a same in kind as the wafer; and a step of processing the wafer while matching a specific value of the power at which values of data of at least two kinds among the characteristic data make abrupt transition with the specific value detected by using the characteristic data which is detected during the processing executed on a wafer which is a same as the wafer in a different reactor.