Discharge structure theory of highly electronegative plasma and its hierarchy and interdisciplinary meanings

Abstract

In this work the systematic theory of discharge structure is built for highly electronegative plasma, by means of self-consistent fluid model simulation that is based on the finite element method. The highly electronegative plasma is selected to be the inductively coupled Ar/SF6 plasma source with 10% the reactive SF6 concentration and in a pressure range of 10~90mTorr. The discharge structure is classified the transport dominated regime, transport and chemistry self-balanced regime and chemistry dominated regime. At low pressure of 10mTorr, the parabola feature of core plasma, stratification of whole discharge area into electronegative core and electropositive halo, anion potential barrel, and the dipole and capacitor models of double layer characterize the discharge structure of transport dominated regime. At increasing the pressure, the recombination loss of ions becomes significant and the discharge structure is characterized by ellipse profile. Meanwhile, the regions of double layer and electropositive halo are strikingly shrunk, which means that the plasma of transport and chemistry self-balanced regime is a close system and probably do not need the shield of chamber anymore. The dimensional analysis shows the recombination can be transformed into drift flux, which balances the ambi-polar diffusion of plasma species. In the range of pressure considered, simulation shows astro-structures are inlayed in the parabolic and elliptic profiles. At observing the characteristics of the astro-structures, the self-coagulation theory and quasi-Helmholtz equation are built based on the free diffusion and negative chemical source. This is the chemistry dominated regime and defined as a tight type of self-balance since the inertia is lost automatically in the unsteady state continuity equations of anions after counteracting the diffusion and recombination.