Direct current dielectric barrier assistant discharge to get homogeneous plasma in capacitive coupled discharge

In this paper, we propose a method to get more homogeneous plasma in the geometrically asymmetric capacitive coupled plasma (CCP) discharge. The dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) is used for the auxiliary discharge system to improve the homogeneity of the geometrically asymmetric CCP discharge. The single Langmuir probe measurement shows that the DBD can increase the electron density in the low density volume, where the DBD electrodes are mounted, when the pressure is higher than 5 Pa. By this manner, we are able to improve the homogeneity of the plasma production and increase the overall density in the target volume. At last, the finite element simulation results show that the DC bias, applied to the DBD electrodes, can increase the homogeneity of the electron density in the CCP discharge. The simulation results show a good agreement with the experiment results. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.