Characterization of Capacitively Coupled Radio-Frequency Argon Plasma by Electrical Circuit Simulation

Abstract

Low temperature radio frequency plasma is widely used in low temperature plasma processing medium for material processing in many fields including microelectronics, aerospace, and the biology. For proper utilization of the process, it is very much important to know the plasma parameters. In this paper a novel technique is used to determine the plasma parameters from the electrical discharge characteristic and the power balance method. The homogeneous discharge model is used to evaluate the relation between the plasma parameters with the discharge characteristics. The electron density and temperature is found to be well agree with the Langmuir probe data in the range of 0.5x1016 to 45x1016 cm-3 and 1.4 to 1.6 ev for wide range of rf power.