On the Quenching of Electron Temperature in Inductively Coupled Plasma

Abstract

Electron temperature has attracted great attention in plasma processing, as it dominates the production of chemical species and energetic ions that impact the processing. Despite having been studied for several decades, the mechanism behind the quenching of electron temperature with increasing discharge power has not been fully understood. In this work, we investigated the quenching of electron temperature in an inductively coupled plasma source using Langmuir probe diagnostics, and suggested a quenching mechanism based on the skin effect of electromagnetic waves within local- and non-local kinetic regimes. This finding provides insight into the quenching mechanism and has implications for controlling electron temperature, thereby enabling efficient plasma material processing.