The Effect of Discharge Chamber Geometry on the Characteristics of Low-Pressure RF Capacitive Discharges

We report the measured extinction curves and current-voltage characteristics (CVCs) in several gases of RF capacitive discharges excited at 13.56 MHz in chambers of three different geometries: 1) parallel plates surrounded by a dielectric cylinder ("symmetric parallel plate"); 2) parallel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on plasma science 2007-04, Vol.35 (2), p.416-424
Main Authors: Lisovskiy, V.A., Booth, J.-P., Landry, K., Douai, D., Cassagne, V., Yegorenkov, V.D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asymmetry
Chamber configuration
Chambers
Current measurement
current-voltage characteristics (CVCs)
Cylinders
Dielectrics
Discharge
Effects
Electric discharges
Electrodes
Electronics
Exact sciences and technology
Extinction
extinction curve
Geometry
High-frequency discharges
Other gas discharges
Parallel plates
Physics
Physics of gases, plasmas and electric discharges
Physics of plasmas and electric discharges
Plasma applications
Plasma chemistry
Plasma confinement
Radio communications
Radio frequencies
Radio frequency
RF capacitive discharge
Voltage
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Summary:We report the measured extinction curves and current-voltage characteristics (CVCs) in several gases of RF capacitive discharges excited at 13.56 MHz in chambers of three different geometries: 1) parallel plates surrounded by a dielectric cylinder ("symmetric parallel plate"); 2) parallel plates surrounded by a metallic cylinder ("asymmetric confined"); and 3) parallel plates inside a much larger metallic chamber ("asymmetric unconfined"), similar to the gaseous electronics conference reference cell. The extinction curves and the CVCs show differences between the symmetric, asymmetric confined, and asymmetric unconfined chamber configurations. In particular, the discharges exist over a much broader range of RF voltages and gas pressures for the asymmetric unconfined chamber. For symmetric and asymmetric confined discharges, the extinction curves are close to each other in the regions near the minima and at lower pressure, but at higher pressure, the extinction curve of the asymmetric confined discharge runs at a lower voltage than the one for the discharge in a symmetric chamber. In the particular cases of an "asymmetric unconfined chamber" discharge or "asymmetric confined" one, the RF discharge experiences the transition from a "weak-current" mode to a "strong-current" one at lower RF voltages than is the case for a "symmetric parallel-plate" discharge
ISSN:0093-3813
1939-9375
DOI:10.1109/TPS.2007.893261