Simultaneous potential and circuit solution for two-dimensional bounded plasma simulation codes

Journal Article · Sat Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 1997 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1006/jcph.1996.5591· OSTI ID:478407

Vahedi, V; DiPeso, G ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)

An algorithm for coupling external circuit elements to be bounded two-dimensional electrostatic plasma simulation codes is developed. In general, the external circuit equations provide a mixture of Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions for the Poisson equation, which is solved each time step for the internal plasma potential. We rewrite the coupling between the plasma and the external circuit parameters a an algebraic or ordinary differential equation for the potential on the boundary. This scheme allows decomposition of the field solve into a Laplace solver with boundary conditions (e.g., applied potentials) and a Poisson solver with zero boundary conditions. We present the details of the external circuit coupling to an explicit electrostatic planar two -dimensional particle-in-cell code called PDP2, and discuss briefly how the coupling can be done in an implicit electrostatic code. The decomposition replaces the iterative coupling with a direct coupling and reduces the amount of computational time spent in the field solver. We use PDP2 to simulate a dually excited capacitively coupled RF discharge and show how such a system can be used as a plasma processing tool with separate control over ion flux and ion bombarding energy. 29 refs., 14 figs.

• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 478407
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 131; ISSN JCTPAH; ISSN 0021-9991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALGORITHMS
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
CIRCUIT THEORY
FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD
MESH GENERATION
PLASMA SIMULATION
POISSON EQUATION
RF SYSTEMS
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS