Argon metastable densities in the GEC reference cell: A numerical study
- Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States). Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC) reference cell was introduced several years ago as a standard parallel plate capacitively coupled experimental platform for comparing measurements from different research groups and providing reliable data for evaluating models. Recently, McMillin and Zachariah applied planar laser-induced fluorescence to construct two-dimensional profiles of argon metastable densities in argon, Ar, Ar/O{sub 2} and Ar/CF{sub 4} plasmas over a wide range of gas pressures and applied rf voltages. They observed systematic trends in the spatial distributions and magnitudes of the Ar* densities. In this paper, the authors report on a numerical investigation of the GEC reference cell for the conditions of these experiments with the goals of identifying the processes responsible for the experimental observations. The numerical model used in this study is based on a previously described hybrid simulation originally developed for inductively coupled plasmas. In the model, ions and neutrals are simulated using fluid techniques, while a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is used for computing the electron dynamics. The fluid and MC modules, coupled with a solution of Poisson`s equation, are iterated until quasi-steady state conditions are obtained. Simulations were performed for the experimental parameter space of 100--1,000 mTorr and rf voltage of 75--300 V.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- National Inst. of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (United States); Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States); National Science Foundation, Washington, DC (United States); Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 428010
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-960634-; TRN: IM9708%%339
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 1996 IEEE international conference on plasma science, Boston, MA (United States), 3-5 Jun 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of IEEE conference record -- Abstracts: 1996 IEEE international conference on plasma science; PB: 324 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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