Formation of Coulomb crystals in a capacitively coupled plasma

Dust particle transport in low-temperature plasmas has received considerable attention due to the desire to minimize contamination of wafers during plasma processing of microelectronic devices and as their use to study nonideal plasmas. Observations of dust particles in radio frequency discharges have shown that particles form Coulomb crystals and display collective behavior. Images are presented here of Coulomb crystals simulated in a capacitively coupled discharge. An abrupt splitting of a single hexagonal lattice into two lattices occurs with increasing substrate bias.