DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal. If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the "Taverne" license above, please follow below link for the End User Agreement:

A theory is presented of the electrical nature of capacitatively coupled RF discharges of the type commonly encountered in microcircuit fabrication. Using arguments bearing on ion and electron fluxes associated with the cathode and anode, an expression is developed relating the ratio of the DC self-bias, VDC, and the applied RF voltage, V0, to the relative electrode areas, and a formula is given for the plasma potential. Good agreement is achieved for a range of experimental data of V0, VDC and plasma potential and the observed relationship in the work of Coburn and Kay (1972) between the ratio of the sheath voltages and the electrode area ratio is convincingly reproduced. The theory promises considerable predictive power which may be of value for the design of RF reactors, especially with regard to the control of ion impact energies at substrate surfaces.

Using a theoretical description of potentials in radio-frequency (rf) discharges reported elsewhere [Song, Field, and Klemperer, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 23, 673 (1990)] we derive the equations of motion for ions from the plasma region striking the cathode and anode in the absence of collisions in the sheath. We compute ion energy distributions (IEDs) which we find to be in excellent agreement with recent experimental data for Ar, Ar/H, mixtures, O,, and CF, parent gases. We also present a method of estimating IEDs which does not involve extensive computation, a development of particular value in the design of reactive ion etching processes.

No abstract

DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal. If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the "Taverne" license above, please follow below link for the End User Agreement: