Particle modelling of inductively-coupled argon plasmas with wafer biasing

Abstract

The characteristics of axisymmetrical inductively-coupled argon plasmas with wafer biasing are examined using the particle-in-cell Monte Carlo method. The simulation is performed on the condition that gas pressure is fixed at 5 mTorr and power deposition is at 200 W. The effects of bias frequency and bias voltage on the distributions of flux and energy of the ions that are incident onto the wafer are investigated. The bias frequency and bias voltage are changed from 2 MHz to 13.56 MHz and 100 V to 300 V, respectively. The plasma structure is largely influenced by the wafer biasing. The ion energy distribution strongly depends on the bias frequency, bias voltage and sheath thickness. Decreasing the bias frequency results in the improvement of the uniformity of ion flux. These results are consistent with the previous theory.