Patent ID: 7439068

Claim:
A plasma monitoring method for detecting the amount of atomic radicals generated by dissociation of a molecular raw material gas during a plasma processing conducted by introducing said molecular raw material gas and a rare gas into a process atmosphere, said method comprising the steps of: determining a dissociation degree of said molecular raw material gas from a partial pressure of said molecular raw material gas in said process atmosphere, a luminous intensity of said rare gas, and a partial pressure of said rare gas in said process atmosphere by the formula: E=P 1×( I/P 2), where E is the dissociation degree, P1 is the partial pressure of said molecular raw material gas in said process atmosphere, I is the luminous intensity of said rare gas, and P 2 is the partial pressure of said rare gas in said process atmosphere; and predicting the amount of said atomic radicals from said dissociation degree, based on the linear proportionality of a plasma processing rate from the dissociation degree, with the plasma processing rate linearly proportional to the amount of said atomic radicals.