Measurement of effective sheath width around the cutoff probe based on electromagnetic simulation

Abstract

We inferred the effective sheath width using the cutoff probe and incorporating a full-wave three-dimensional electromagnetic (EM) simulation. The EM simulation reproduced the experimentally obtained plasma-sheath resonance (PSR) on the microwave transmission (S-21) spectrum well. The PSR frequency has a one-to-one correspondence with the width of the vacuum layer assumed to be the effective sheath in the EM simulation model. The sheath width was estimated by matching the S-21 spectra of the experiment and the EM simulation for different widths of the sheath. We found that the inferred sheath widths quantitatively and qualitatively agree with the sheath width measured by incorporating an equivalent circuit model. These results demonstrate the excellent potential of the cutoff probe for inferring the effective sheath width from its experimental spectrum data. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC