Diagnosis of capacitively coupled plasma driven by pulse-modulated 27.12 MHz by using an emissive probe

Abstract

There are several methods of diagnosing the capacitively coupled plasma, such as microwave resonance probe, Langmuir probe, etc, but methods like microwave resonance probe are mainly used for determining the electron density. Moreover, in the diagnosing of plasma potential, the emissive probe has a higher accuracy than the traditional electrostatic probes, and it can directly monitor the potential in real time. However, in the existing work, emissive probe is mostly applied to the diagnosis of plasmas with high density or plasmas modulated by pulsed dual frequency (one of the radio frequency sources is modulated), the experiments on the emissive probe diagonising plasma excited by a pulsed single frequency are quite rare. In this paper, the temporal evolution of the plasma potential and electron temperature with input power and pressure in a pulsed 27.12 MHz capacitively coupled argon plasma are investigated by using an emissive probe operated in floating point mode. The plasma potential is obtained by measuring emissive probe potential under a strongly heated condition, while the electron temperature is estimated from the potential difference between the emissive probe under strongly heating and cold conditions. The measurements show that as the pulse is on, the plasma potential will rise rapidly and become saturated within 300 μs due to the requirement for neutrality condition; while the pulse is off, the plasma potential undergoes a rapid decline and then stabilizes. An overshoot for the electron temperature occurs as the onset of the pulse, because of the influence of radio frequency electric field and residual electrons from the last pulse; during the pulse-off time, rapid loss of high-energy electrons causes the electron temperature to rapidly drops to 0.45 eV within 300 μs, then it rises slightly, which is related to the electrons emitted by the probe. The plasma potential basically has a linear dependence on the change of input power and pressure for the pulse-on and pulse-off time; and the input power has a greater influence on the difference between the overshoot electron temperature and the steady state electron temperature during the pulse-on time. Corresponding explanations are given for the temporal evolution of plasma potential and electron temperature in different pulse stages and under different discharge conditions.