Analysis of energy relaxation kinetics for control of the electron energy distributions in capacitively coupled RF discharges

作者：Lee Jung Yeol; Verboncoeur John P; Lee Hae June^*

来源：Plasma Sources Science and Technology, 2018, 27(4): 04LT01.

DOI：10.1088/1361-6595/aab862

• EEPF transition
• capacitively coupled plasmas
• particle-in-cell simulation

The transition of electron energy probability functions (EEPFs) through the change of heating mode is an important issue in plasma science. A well-known example is that the increase of gas pressure, which was analyzed in terms of the ratio of the energy relaxation mean free path to the electrode gap distance, changes the EEPF from bi-Maxwellian to Maxwellian or Druyvesteyn. In this study, a new aspect of the temporal decay of kinetic energy during the energy relaxation time is theoretically analyzed and compared with a particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision simulation of capacitively coupled plasmas. A fully kinetic description of electron transport and collisions shows drastic changes of EEPFs with the variation of the driving frequency due to the heating mode transition.

• 出版日期2018-4