COMPUTATIONAL SCHEME FOR SIMULATING PLASMA DYNAM-ICS DURING PLASMA-IMMERSION ION IMPLANTATION

Plasma-immersion ion implantation (PIII) is a technique for implanting ions into conducting, semiconducting and insulating objects. In PIII, the object being treated is immersed in a plasma and pulsed to a large negative voltage (=-1 to-100 kV). The resulting sheath expands into the ambient plasma, extracting ions and accelerating them to the target. PIII has advantages over beam-line implantation in that large surfaces can be rapidly implanted, irregularly-shaped objects can be implanted without target manipulation, and surfaces that are not line-of-sight accessible can be treated. A two-dimensional, self-consistent model of plasma dynamics appropriate for PIII is described. The model is a hybrid, with Boltzmann electrons and kinetic ions, where the ion Vlasov equation is solved using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. Solutions of the model give the time dependence of the ion flux, energy and impact angle at the target surface, together with the evolution of the sheath.