Magnetized plasma sheath dynamics in plasma source ion implantation

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the effects of an oblique magnetic field on the lateral ion dynamics and the sheath structure in the pulsed plasma sheath. We use a time-dependent, ion-fluid and Boltzmann electrons (hybrid-model) model to simulate the sheath dynamics. We studied the sheath thickness and the ion flux in the presence of an oblique magnetic field for different magnetic field magnitudes in lateral dimension. Numerical results show that the static magnetic field has affects on the ion dynamics and the sheath structure and characteristics of ion implantation. The Ion density increases obviously when the magnetic field magnitude increases or when the angle between magnetic and electric field increases particularly in the vicinity of the surface. It has been shown that the sheath width and the ion flux incident to the surface decrease as the magnetic field intensity increases. Ability of magnetic field to change the sheath structure and the sheath characteristics would be interesting in lots of plasma applications like plasma source ion implantation that we focus on it in this paper.