A study on plasma parameters in Ar/SF6 inductively coupled plasma

Abstract

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) gas or Ar/SF6 mixing gas is widely used in plasma processes. However, there are a little experimental studies with various external parameters such as gas pressure and mixing ratio. In this work, a study of the plasma parameters by changing the gas mixing ratio was done in an Ar/SF6 inductively coupled plasma from the measurement of the electron energy distribution function. At a low gas pressure, as the mixing ratio of SF6 gas increased at a fixed inductively coupled plasma (ICP) power, the electron density decreased and the electron temperature increased, while they were not changed drastically. At a high gas pressure, a remarkable increase in the electron temperature was observed with the decrease in the electron density. These variations are due to the electron loss reactions such as the electron attachment. It was also found that at a fixed ICP power, the negative ion creation with the diluted SF6 gas can change the discharge mode transition from an inductive mode to a capacitive mode at the high gas pressure. The electron attachment reactions remove the low energy electrons and change the mean electron energy towards higher energies with diluting SF6 gas at high pressure. The measured results were compared with the simplified global model, and the global model is in relatively good agreement with the measured plasma parameters except for the result in the case of the large portion of SF6 gas at the high pressure and the capacitive mode, which causes strong negative ion formation by the electron attachment reactions.