Global model and scaling laws for inductively coupled oxygen discharge plasmas

For inductively coupled oxygen rf discharge plasmas, a global model which consists of the energy and particle balance equations is formulated. The energy balance equation includes energy losses for electron-neutral elastic collision, excitation, ionization, dissociation, pair production, and charged particle wall loss. Particle balance equations are written for all species of interest. For a specified discharge length and diameter, absorbed power, pressure, electron temperature-dependent reaction rate coefficients and surface recombination constants, we solve these equations to determine the densities of all species and the electron temperature. We measure these parameters by the Langmuir probe method. According to the prevailing particle loss mechanism, the parameter space can be divided into a volume recombination-loss-dominated region and an ion-flux-loss-dominated region. Based on the global model equations, the scaling laws of plasma variables with the control parameters for the ion-flux-loss-dominated region are estimated and compared with the experimental results. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(99)04019-0].