Computational study on reliability of sheath width measurement by the cutoff probe in low pressure plasmas

Abstract

Recently, the technique for measurement of the sheath width by using the cutoff probe and its equivalent circuit model was proposed and conducted experimentally. In this study, we investigate the reliability of this technique based on the computational simulation. The simulation of three-dimensional Finite-Difference Time-Domain reproduces the transmission spectrum of the cutoff probe with an input parameter of sheath width. We measure the sheath width by using the circuit model and calculate the discrepancy between them under various input plasma densities and sheath widths. The results show the acceptable discrepancy under all of the conditions we studied (the largest discrepancy is about 45%). This indicates that the technique for measurement of sheath width around the floating tip of cutoff probe is robust and reliable.