Nonmonotonic spatial decay and shield height effects in inductively coupled plasmas

Nonmonotonic spatial decay in electric field and space current distributions was recently observed in weakly collisional plasmas. The anomalous skin effect is found to be responsible for this phenomenon. Based on our proposed self-consistent analytic model, we successfully modeled the nonmonotonic spatial decay effect in inductively coupled plasma sources. The simulated spatial distribution of the induced E-field is compared to the measurements for different applied RF powers. Quantitative agreements for the electric field and qualitative agreement for the induced space current are achieved between the simulated and measured data. Also demonstrated is that the RF power and the reactor geometry such as the shield height has a direct impact upon the anomalous skin effect and its skin depth