Voltage distribution over capacitively coupled plasma electrode for atmospheric-pressure plasma generation

When capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) is used to generate large-area plasma, the standing wave effect becomes significant, which results in the hindering of the uniform plasma process such as in a plasma etcher or plasma chemical vapor deposition. In this study, the transmission line modeling method is applied to calculate the voltage distribution over atmospheric-pressure CCP electrodes with the size of 1 m × 0.2 m. The measured plasma impedance in our previous study was used in the present calculation. The results of the calculations clearly showed the effects of excitation frequency and the impedance of the plasma on the form of the voltage distribution caused by the standing wave effect. In the case of 150 MHz frequency, the standing wave effect causes a drastic change in the voltage distribution via plasma ignition; however, the change is small for 13.56 MHz. It was also clarified that the power application position is important for obtaining a uniform voltage distribution.