Self-consistent modelling of plasma-solid interaction

Abstract

In the paper the transport of electrons and ions in plasma is studied by computer simulation. The main goal of the modelling was to establish an exact form of energy distributions of charged particles near the metal substrates immersed into plasma and to analyse changes in their distributions during the transport through both the presheath and the sheath for various voltage biases and substrate geometries. Further results concern the probe characteristics both in inert gas and chemically active plasma and the distribution of potential and space charge in the vicinity of metal electrodes. As a simulation technique the combination of molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo methods was used. The movement of charged particles in self-consistent electric field was studied under the assumption of internal symmetry of the problem, which enabled to reduce the number of necessary coordinates to four (either 1d3v or 2d2v).