Harmonic content of electron energy distributions and excitation rates

Summary form only given, as follows. Although low pressure (<10 s mTorr), high frequency (>MHz) inductively coupled plasmas (ICPs) are thought of as providing quasi-cw sources of excitation, harmonic excitation may occur, particularly for high threshold processes. This harmonic excitation results from modulation of the electron energy distribution (EED) due to both linear and non-linear processes. In this paper, the harmonic content of EEDs and excitation rates in low pressure ICPs will be discussed using results from a 2-dimensional plasma equipment model. The model uses a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) to resolve electron energy transport in self-consistently generated electromagnetic and electrostatic fields. During collection of statistics in the MCS, Fourier transforms in time are taken of the electron trajectories, binned according to space. The end results are Fourier coefficients of the time harmonics as a function of position and energy which can be used to reconstruct the time dependence of the EEDs.