Two-dimensional fluid simulation of pulsed-power inductively coupled Ar/H2 discharge

Abstract

In low-temperature Ar/H2 discharge for material processing, the main factor influencing the film quality improvement is the active species responsible for surface reactions, such as hydrogen atoms or hydrogen ions. The changes in plasma chemistry with the operating conditions affect the production of active species in the bulk plasma region. In conventional Ar/H2 discharge using continuous-wave plasma, there is not enough information to explain the correlations between the active species generation and process parameters. In particular, it is difficult to investigate the relationship between the generation of Hx (x = 1, 2) ions using the ratio of Ar to hydrogen as an operating variable, and an additional control knob is required in research on the occurrence of each active species. To improve the efficiency of material processing and enhance process controllability, an inductively coupled plasma Ar/H2 pulsed power model (source pulsing) was introduced and investigated in this study. This work provides an overview of the generation of each active species in pulsed Ar/H2 discharge and discusses the effects of the Ar/H2 gas mixture ratio, duty cycle, and pulse frequency. In addition, it presents an analysis of the principle of the Ar/H2 pulsed plasma process for the production of active species, demonstrating that the generation densities of specific ions and neutral particles can be controlled.