Brian George Heil et al 2009 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42 085205 doi:10.1088/0022-3727/42/8/085205
Brian George Heil1,2, Ralf Peter Brinkmann3 and Uwe Czarnetzki1
Show affiliationsThe exact mechanism for the heating of electrons in the sheath of radio frequency capacitively coupled plasma (RF-CCP) discharges is poorly understood. A hybrid one-dimensional model of a RF-CCP discharge is used to study this problem by tracking electron trajectories and electron energy change in the RF-CCP sheath. This study shows that the Ohmic electric field, the field due to conduction current, can have an effect on electron heating in the plasma sheath. Both the ambipolar and the Ohmic electric field can repel low energy electrons and reduce their interaction with the changing electric field in the sheath region. A comparison is made between the more realistic Brinkmann fluid sheath model and a hard wall approximation. For energetic electrons, the hard wall approximation accurately models electron heating. However, the hard wall approximation does not accurately model the heating of lower energy electrons or allow for electron losses to the electrode. A comparison is also made between the electron energy probability function calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation with and without the effects of the sheath.
52.50.Nr Plasma heating by DC fields; ohmic heating, arcs
Issue 8 (21 April 2009)
Received 18 February 2009, in final form 20 February 2009
Published 1 April 2009
Brian George Heil et al 2009 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42 085205
Fang Peng and Daisuke Nagai 2009 ApJ 705 L58
Paul Baer 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 015007
Fang Peng and Daisuke Nagai 2009 ApJ 693 839
R A Gaunt et al 2009 J. Neural Eng. 6 055009
A. Gáspár et al. 2009 ApJ 697 1578
E Thornton 1960 Proc. Phys. Soc. 76 104
B. Abbott et al. 2007 ApJ 659 918
A E A Warburton and R W Hatfield 1977 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 10 909
Alberto L Delis et al 2009 Physiol. Meas. 30 931