PULSING A LOW-PRESSURE RADIOFREQUENCY DISCHARGE

A 1 D Particle-in-Cell (PIC-MCC) simulation has been used to study the effect of temporal modulation (pulsing) of an rf (13.56 MHz) source v oltage on the evolution of an argon plasma. Plasma breakdown occurs du ring the first on-time of the pulse and analytic expressions for the d ensity evolution during and after breakdown are presented for the sing le pulse case. The effect of multiple pulsing on the plasma developmen t is then examined and compared with the steady-state evolution. Exper imental measurements of pulsing in a parallel plate rf system are also presented, which have a high qualitative agreement with the simulatio n results.