Capacitively Coupled Plasma

Application ID: 23351


The NIST Gaseous Electronics Conference has provided a platform for studying Capacitively Coupled Plasma (CCP) reactors, which is what this application is based upon.

The operating principle of a capacitively coupled plasma is different when compared to the inductive case. In a CCP reactor, the plasma is sustained by applying a sinusoidal electrostatic potential across a small gap filled with a low pressure gas (typically 1 Torr and in this case, the gas is Argon). The mechanism of power deposition into a CCP reactor is highly nonlinear and the system needs sufficient RF cycles in order to reach a periodic steady-state solution.

This application allows the user to provide inputs to configure the properties of both the plasma and the dielectric along with general operation inputs such as the physical dimensions of the cell, the number of RF cycles and driving frequency and voltage.

Plots show time/period averaged data and instantaneous data over the last RF cycle, along with excited species evolution. Animations of the time-averaged data are also available. Furher, the CCP Simulator returns period-averaged deposited power and the peak current.

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: