Formation of Coulomb crystals in a capacitively coupled plasma

Author

Vyas, Vivek ; Kushner, Mark J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mater. Sci. & Eng., Illinois Univ., Urbana, IL, USA

Volume

30

Issue

1

fYear

2002

fDate

2/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

92

Lastpage

93

Abstract

Dust particle transport in low-temperature plasmas has received considerable attention due to the desire to minimize contamination of wafers during plasma processing of microelectronic devices and as their use to study nonideal plasmas. Observations of dust particles in radio frequency discharges have shown that particles form Coulomb crystals and display collective behavior. Images are presented here of Coulomb crystals simulated in a capacitively coupled discharge. An abrupt splitting of a single hexagonal lattice into two lattices occurs with increasing substrate bias

Keywords

dusty plasmas; high-frequency discharges; plasma applications; plasma diagnostics; plasma transport processes; Coulomb crystals formation; capacitively coupled discharge; capacitively coupled plasma; collective behavior; dust particle transport; lattice splitting; low-temperature plasmas; microelectronic devices; nonideal plasmas; plasma applications; plasma processing; plasma properties; plasma sheaths; radio frequency discharges; single hexagonal lattice; substrate bias; wafer contamination minimisation; Contamination; Crystals; Dusty plasma; Lattices; Microelectronics; Plasma devices; Plasma displays; Plasma materials processing; Plasma simulation; Plasma transport processes;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPS.2002.1003939

Filename

1003939