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The wide applicability of capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) deposition has increased the interest in developing comprehensive numerical models, but CCP imposes a tremendous computational cost when conducting a transient analysis in a three-dimensional (3D) model which reflects the real geometry of reactors. In particular, the detailed flow features of reactive gases induced by 3D geometric effects need to be considered for the precise calculation of radical distribution of reactive species. Thus, an alternative inclusive method for the numerical simulation of CCP deposition is proposed to simulate a two-dimensional (2D) CCP model based on the 3D gas flow results by simulating flow, temperature, and species fields in a 3D space at first without calculating the plasma chemistry. A numerical study of a cylindrical showerhead-electrode CCP reactor was conducted for particular cases of SiH4/NH3/N2/He gas mixture to deposit a hydrogenated silicon nitride (SiNxHy) film. The proposed methodology produces numerical results for a 300 mm wafer deposition reactor which agree very well with the deposition rate profile measured experimentally along the wafer radius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast 2D axisymmetric fluid-analytical multifrequency capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) reactor code is used to study center high nonuniformity in a low pressure electronegative chlorine discharge. In the code, a time-independent Helmholtz wave equation is used to solve for the capacitive fields in the linearized frequency domain. This eliminates the time dependence from the electromagnetic (EM) solve, greatly speeding up the simulations at the cost of neglecting higher harmonics. However, since the code allows up to three driving frequencies, we can add the two most important harmonics to the CCP simulations as the second and third input frequencies. The amplitude and phase of these harmonics are estimated by using a recently developed 1D radial nonlinear transmission line (TL) model of a highly asymmetric cylindrical discharge (Lieberman et al 2015 Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. 24 055011). We find that at higher applied frequencies, the higher harmonics contribute significantly to the center high nonuniformity due to their shorter plasma wavelengths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this computational study, a gliding arc plasma reactor with a reverse-vortex flow stabilization is modelled for the first time by a fluid plasma description. The plasma reactor operates with argon gas at atmospheric pressure. The gas flow is simulated using the k-ε Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes turbulent model. A quasi-neutral fluid plasma model is used for computing the plasma properties. The plasma arc movement in the reactor is observed, and the results for the gas flow, electrical characteristics, plasma density, electron temperature, and gas temperature are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]