Sheath voltage ratio for asymmetric RF discharges

Author

Alves, M.V. ; Liberman, M.A. ; Vahedi, V. ; Birdsall, C.K.

fYear

1990

fDate

21-23 May 1990

Firstpage

184

Abstract

Summary form only given. Spherical and cylindrical many-particle models are being used to simulate RF discharges in which the RF powered and the grounded electrodes have different areas. This asymmetry determines the magnitude of the self-bias voltage V_a (the ion bombarding energy) at the powered electrode, which is a critical process parameter. One-dimensional (radial) spherical shell models have been developed, incorporating various assumptions for the sheath and the glow discharges, leading to a scaling which is in agreement with some measurements. The spherical model has been simulated with a nonuniform ionization, and the results agree with the theory. The cylindrical simulation shows that the floating potential plays an important role. The simulation results were obtained graphically as the sheath voltage ratio versus area ratio. The simulation codes are PDC1 (cylindrical) and PDS1 (spherical), which utilize particle-in-cell techniques plus Monte Carlo simulation of electron-neutral and ion-neutral collisions

Keywords

high-frequency discharges; plasma sheaths; plasma simulation; Monte Carlo; PDC1; PDS1; RF powered electrodes; asymmetric RF discharges; critical process parameter; cylindrical many-particle models; cylindrical simulation; electron-neutral; floating potential; glow discharges; grounded electrodes; ion bombarding energy; ion-neutral collisions; nonuniform ionization; one-dimensional spherical shell model; particle-in-cell techniques; powered electrode; radial model; self-bias voltage; sheath voltage ratio; spherical many-particle models;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Plasma Science, 1990. IEEE Conference Record - Abstracts., 1990 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Oakland, CA, USA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PLASMA.1990.110776

Filename

5726046