Collisionless sheath heating in current-driven capacitively coupled plasma discharges via higher order sinusoidal signals

Abstract

Collisionless heating of the electrons in the vicinity of the sheath region corresponding to higher order sinusoidal signals in a current-driven radio-frequency capacitively coupled plasma discharge has been investigated analytically and further verified by particle-in-cell simulation. The simulation results for collisionless sheath heating are found to be in good agreement with analytical predictions. In contrast to the voltage driven case, it is demonstrated that a pure sinusoidal waveform gives maximum electron sheath heating with a current-driven configuration and the ion energy can be controlled by varying the pulse width.