Large-area surface wave excited N/sub 2/-Ar overdense plasma

Summary form only given. Large scale, high-density microwave plasma sources with flat plasma geometry are of relevant interest for the processing of meter-size advanced electronic devices such as flat panel displays, solar cells etc. In the present work, a slot-antenna excited large area surface wave plasma source operating in N/sub 2/-Ar mixtures is the system under investigation. Surface waves propagating radially and axially along the interface between the plasma and a dielectric plate located at the top wall of a large diameter cylindrical camera are the energy source for the plasma. The waves are launched by microwave radiation from a pair of slot antennas cut in the top camera wall above the dielectric plate. The waves form a resonant eigenmode satisfying the boundary conditions and the plasma "sticks" to some discrete density values which ensure that some of the resonant eigenmodes exactly appear at the excitation frequency (2.45 GHz). For a stable operation of such a system, selective excitation of a proper mode is necessary. For this reason, the analysis is made for overdense plasma sustained by discrete pure surface modes, i.e. TM33, TM62, TM53 etc. To describe properly the discharge physics, a 2D theoretical model is developed. The plasma density at which a given mode appears and the electric field pattern in the r-9 plane (z=const) are calculated from Maxwell\´s equations and the wave dispersion equation in complex algebra. The electrodynamical part of the analysis is coupled to the particle kinetics through the value of the electron density at which a given mode appears.