In reactive-ion etching (RIE) of silicon oxide (SiO2) or silicon nitride (SiN) by fluorocarbon (FC) or hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) plasmas, fluorinated carbon layers may be formed on the etched surfaces and affect their etching rates. In this study, the properties of SiO2 and SiN etching by FC or HFC plasmas are examined in light of the formation mechanism of such carbon layers by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Furthermore, in this study, the electronegativity effect of fluorine (F) is taken into account in the interatomic potential functions for C–F and Si–F bonds and MD simulations here show SiO2 and SiN sputtering yields are closer to those obtained from ion beam experiments. It has been found from MD simulations that the SiN sputtering yield during etching by HFC ions is higher than that by FC ions owning to the fact that hydrogen in the HFC ion beam tends to impede the formation of a fluorocarbon layer on SiN and therefore energetic fluorine ions/atoms are more readily available to etch SiN underneath the polymer layer.

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The self-sputtering yield of the (100) face-centered cubic crystal surface consisting of particles interacting with the Lennard–Jones (LJ) potential is presented as a function of the normalized incident particle kinetic energy for normal incidence. Because the self-sputtering yield depends only on the normalized incident energy, the yield curve presented here is the universal curve, independent of the Lennard–Jones parameters, and therefore serves as the fundamental reference data for the LJ system. The self-sputtering yield data are also compared with experimentally obtained self-sputtering yields of some metals, which shows reasonable agreement at relatively low ion incident energy where mostly deposition occurs. At higher ion energy, the self-sputtering of such an LJ material does not represent those of real solids. This is because the repulsive interactions of the LJ potential do not represent those of actual atoms at short distances. The angle dependence of the self-sputtering yield is also presented for some selected normalized energies.

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Abstract.A marked feature of the pebble divertor is an effect by use of functional multi-layer coated pebble, which consists of a surface plasma facing layer, an intermediate tritium permeation barrier layer, and a kernel for heat removal. The dimensions, structure and the irradiation conditions of pebbles are the important issues for the development of the pebble divertor. From the view point of resistance of the induced thermal stress, the pebble is taken as small as possible in size. On the other hand, from the view point of the pumping performance, the suitable irradiation temperature range of the surface layer of pebble was estimated from the experiments and the numerical analysis. The pumping process enhanced by dynamic retention is available to extend the higher allowable irradiation temperature range from 900K to 1100K. As taking the temperature rise limitation due to pumping effect and the fractural strength due to the induced thermal stress limitation, it was found that the diameter of the pebble is possible to be 1-2 mm in about 20 MW/m 2 for the SiC kernel and 2-3 mm in less than 30 MW/m 2 for the graphite kernel.