Charging effects on temporal and spatial evolution of the dusty plasma sheath in plasma source ion implantation

The temporal and spatial evolution of a dusty plasma sheath in plasma sourc e ion implantation has been investigated with a fluid theory and a self-con sistent dust charging model. A negative potential pulse is introduced to fo rm the plasma sheath. The effect of the dust charging process becomes signi ficant when the charging time is longer than either the pulse period or the ion response time (measured by the inverse of the ion plasma frequency). N umerical results indicate that the sheath expands faster than dust-free she aths. It is also shown that, for small dust particles, the motion of dust p articles is very remarkable and the charging effect can be negligible, and for large dust particles, the charging effect of dust particles becomes mor e evident while they are almost kept stationary during the whole negative p otential pulse. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.