Study of the Characteristics of DC and ICP Hybrid Discharge Plasmas

In this paper, the double-discharge plasma generated by radio frequency (RF) and direct current (DC) has been investigated. In comparison with their single-frequency counterpart, the interaction between the two excitations is significant and beneficial. The results show that the RF discharge can effectively increase the DC discharge current and decrease the DC voltage; meanwhile the DC discharge is favorable to feed abundant high energy seed electrons to the ICP discharge sustaining at 13.56 MHz for the latter to acquire higher plasma density and lower plasma potential by increasing the ionization rate. The innovative design has been demonstrated to facilitate more homogeneous performance with higher plasma density.