Characteristics of single and dual radio-frequency (RF) plasma sheaths

Abstract

The characteristics of radio-frequency(RF) plasma sheaths have been topics of much scientific study for decades, and have also been of great importance in the manufacture of integrated circuits and fabricating microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), as well as in the study of physical phenomena in dusty plasmas. The sheaths behave special properties under various situations where they can be treated as collisionless or collisional, single- or dual-RF, one- or two-dimensional (1D or 2D) sheaths, etc. This paper reviews our recent progress on the dynamics of RF plasma sheaths using a fluid method that includes the fluid equations and Poission s equation coupled with an equivalent circuit model and a hybrid method in which the fluid model is combined with the Monte-Carlo (MC) method. The structures of RF sheaths behave differently in various situations and plasma parameters such as the ion density, electron temperature, as well as the external parameters such as the applied frequency, power, gas pressure, magnetic field, are crucial for determining the characteristics of plasma sheaths.