The effects of nonlinear series resonance on Ohmic and stochastic heating in capacitive discharges

The flow of electron and ion conduction currents across a nonlinear capacitive sheath to the electrode surface self-consistently sets the dc bias voltage across the sheath. We incorporate these currents into a model of a homogeneous capacitive sheath in order to determine the enhancement of the Ohmic and stochastic heating due to self-excitation of the nonlinear series resonance in an asymmetric capacitive discharge. At lower pressures, the series resonance can enhance both the Ohmic and stochastic heating by factors of 2-4, with the Ohmic heating tending to zero as the pressure decreases. The model was checked, for a particular set of parameters, by a particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation using the homogeneous sheath approximation, giving good agreement. With a self-consistent Child-law sheath, the PIC simulation showed increased heating, as expected, whether the series resonance is important or not. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.