We measured electrical characteristics of transversely magnetized capacitively coupled plasma at low pressure (10 mTorr). From these measurements, we found that the power characteristics of the magnetized discharge were different from those of the unmagnetized discharge. As the magnetic field increases, a square dependence of power characteristic at high current changes to a linear dependence. This can be understood as a power dissipation mode transition by a magnetic field. A calculation from a simple sheath model agrees well with the experimental data.
We measured electrical characteristics of capacitively coupled plasma at low pressure (2.67 Pa) with different driving frequencies. From these measurements, we observed a significant change in discharge power characteristics during the frequency increase. While increasing the frequency, a square dependence of power characteristics (P∼I2) changes to a linear dependence (P∼I). This observed result reflects that a power dissipation mode transition from an ion-dominated dissipation mode to an electron-dominated dissipation mode takes place during the driving frequency increase. Both the results calculated from a simple sheath model and a particle-in-cell simulation are in a good agreement with the experimental data.
The evolution of the electron energy distribution function is investigated in the low-pressure capacitive discharge under the collisionless electron heating regime, where the electron mean-free path is comparable to or larger than the system length. As the gas pressure decreases from 50 to 10 mTorr, a different feature of electron energy distribution with a plateau in the low-energy electron range, indicating the strong electron heating in that energy range, is found. This observed result can be explained in terms of collisionless heating from the interaction between the electron bouncing motion and the oscillating sheath [Y. M. Aliev, I. D. Kaganovich, and H. Schuter, Phys. Plasmas 4, 2413 (1997)]. A simple calculation of the electron energy distribution with the energy diffusion coefficient, including the electron bounce effect, is in good agreement with the experiment.
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