Nonequilibrium dissociation of hydrogen in a parallel-plate radio frequency discharge Original Research Article

We present a 1D model of the radio frequency parallel-plate discharge in pure hydrogen, based on the self-consistent coupling of a 3-species (e, H3+, H+) PIC/MCC (particle in cell with Monte Carlo collisions) particle description of the plasma phase and a chemical kinetics model including H2(X 1Σ+g, v=0, …, 14) molecules and hydrogen atoms. The model allows a description of the plasma and dissociation kinetics which is very general, the only limit being the reduced dimensionality in space. The model is applied to a test case interesting for applications, emphasizing the calculation of the atom production rate: it is found that the contributions of the different channels can be evaluated and their relative importance estimated only by taking into full account the translational nonequilibrium of electrons and the vibrational nonequilibrium of molecules.