Plasma desmear and etch-back by plasma is an established practice in the PCB industry. Drilling vias through multilayer PCB’s leaves residue, or smear, on the via walls. This smear must be removed before metallization (to establish electrical connectivity) can occur. Gas plasma readily cleans smear in through-vias by the activation of oxygen and fluorinated compounds such as CF4. The plasma released oxygen and fluorine radicals attacks the resinous smear by a chemical etch process. The result is clean vias completely free of smear. Competing technologies using wet chemical methods fall short when it comes to fine through-vias, Teflon® core material, or acrylic adhesives used on polyimide based interposers. For those applications, low pressure gas plasma has proven to be the superior cleaning method. PVA TePla’s unique electrode design also ensures excellent plasma treatment uniformity, not only across each board, but also from one board to another and from process to process.