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Chin. Phys. B, 2008, Vol. 17(10): 3799-3806    DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/17/10/044
PHYSICS OF GASES, PLASMAS, AND ELECTRIC DISCHARGES Prev   Next  

High and low frequency relaxation oscillations in a capacitive discharge plasma

Zhou Zhu-Wen(周筑文)a), Sungjin Kimb), Ji Shi-Yin(吉世印)a), Sun Guang-Yu(孙光宇)a), and Deng Ming-Sen(邓明森)a)
a Department of physics, Guizhou Educational College, Guiyang 550003, China; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences - 1770 University of California, Berkeley CA 94720, U.S.A.
Abstract  Both high and low frequency relaxation oscillations have been observed in an argon capacitive discharge connected to a peripheral grounded chamber through a slot with dielectric spacers. The oscillations, observed from time-varying optical emission of the main discharge chamber, show, for example, a high frequency (46 kHz) relaxation oscillation at 100 mTorr, with an absorbed power near the peripheral breakdown, and a low frequency (2.7--3.7 Hz) oscillation, at a higher absorbed power. The high frequency oscillation is found to ignite a plasma in the slot, but usually not in the periphery. The high frequency oscillation is interpreted by using an electromagnetic model of the slot impedance, combined with the circuit analysis of the system including a matching network. The model is further developed by using a parallel connection of variable peripheral capacitance to analyse the low frequency oscillation. The results obtained from the model are in agreement with the experimental observations and indicate that a variety of behaviours are dependent on the matching conditions.
Keywords:  relaxation oscillation      capacitive discharge      periphery      slot  
Received:  14 February 2008      Revised:  31 March 2008      Accepted manuscript online: 
PACS:  52.35.Fp (Electrostatic waves and oscillations (e.g., ion-acoustic waves))  
  52.80.-s (Electric discharges)  
  52.25.Os (Emission, absorption, and scattering of electromagnetic radiation ?)  
  52.35.Py (Macroinstabilities (hydromagnetic, e.g., kink, fire-hose, mirror, ballooning, tearing, trapped-particle, flute, Rayleigh-Taylor, etc.))  
Fund: Project supported by the Science Foundation of the Educational Bureau of Guizhou Province in China (Grant No ECS-2006215), the Lam Research Corporation, the State of California MICRO Program, National Science Foundation (Grant No ECS-0139956), and a UC Discovery Grant from the Industry-University Cooperative Research Program (IUCRP).

Cite this article: 

Zhou Zhu-Wen(周筑文), Sungjin Kim, Ji Shi-Yin(吉世印), Sun Guang-Yu(孙光宇), and Deng Ming-Sen(邓明森) High and low frequency relaxation oscillations in a capacitive discharge plasma 2008 Chin. Phys. B 17 3799

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