Modeling electromagnetic effects in large-area capacitively coupled discharges

Summary form only given. A large-area vacuum chamber for capacitively coupled plasmas is required in the semiconductor industry because it saves production cost and time. As the wavelength of the external driving waveform decreases to the order of the radius of the vacuum chamber, the electromagnetic effect is significantly observed. It causes plasma non-uniformity, which makes it hard to control plasma processing. The electromagnetic effect for large-area capacitively coupled plasma has been studied in order to resolve non-uniformity of plasma density in CCPs for a wafer size larger than 300 mm in diameter. Computer simulations have been performed for several decades, but most studies have not solved electromagnetic equations directly because a finite difference time domain method (FDTD) requires a small times step, which makes the simulation time very long to reach a steady state. Recently, alternative methods have been introduced to implement the electromagnetic effect in the plasma simulation. S. Rauf et al. solved magnetic vector potential in frequency domain to couple it with a fluid simulation. They observed significant electromagnetic effect in a large-area CCP. In order to access realistic results with minimizing assumption, a two-dimensional particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC-MCC) simulation is developed in this study to be coupled with the electromagnetic field solver in a frequency domain. The benchmark and validation of the electromagnetic PIC-MCC code is presented in this study including the comparison with a fluid model. The electromagnetic field solver in the frequency is coupled with the electrostatic PIC-MCC simulation.