Modeling and simulation of ion energy distribution functions in technological plasmas

Abstract

The highly advanced treatment of surfaces as etching and deposition is mainly enabled by the extraordinary properties of technological plasmas. The primary factors that influence these processes are the flux and the energy of various species, particularly ions, that impinge the substrate surface. These features can be theoretically described using the ion energy distribution function (IEDF). The article is intended to summarize the fundamental concepts of modeling and simulation of IEDFs from simplified models to self-consistent plasma simulations. Finally, concepts for controlling the IEDF are discussed.

Invited paper based on an invited talk given by the author at the 15th Plasma Technology Conference (PT15) held in Stuttgart, Germany, 2011

References in corpus (1)

• Fine-sorting One-dimensional Particle-In-Cell Algorithm with Monte-Carlo Collisions on a Graphics Processing Unit

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Ion energy distribution functions behind the sheaths of magnetized and non magnetized radio frequency discharges
• Continuum and Kinetic Simulations of the Neutral Gas Flow in an Industrial Physical Vapor Deposition Reactor
• Kinetic simulation of the sheath dynamics in the intermediate radio-frequency regime
• Particle-in-Cell/Test-Particle Simulations of Technological Plasmas: Sputtering Transport in Capacitive Radio Frequency Discharges