Dual frequency capacitive discharges are designed to offer independent control of the flux and energy of ions impacting on an object immersed in a plasma. This is desirable in applications such as the processing of silicon wafers for microelectronics manufacturing. In such discharges, a low frequency component couples predominantly to the ions, while a high frequency component couples predominantly to electrons. Thus, the low frequency component controls the ion energy, while the high frequency component controls the plasma density. Clearly, this desired behaviour is not achieved for arbitrary configurations of the discharge, and in general one expects some unwanted coupling of ion flux and energy. In this paper we use computer simulations with the particle-in-cell method to show that the most important governing parameter is the ratio of the driving frequencies. If the ratio of the high and low frequencies is great enough, essentially independent control of the ion energy and flux is possible by manipulation of the high and low frequency power sources. Other operating parameters, such as pressure, discharge geometry, and absolute power, are of much less significance.

Particle-in-cell simulations have been used to study the nature of dual frequency plasma discharges. It is observed that both the ion flux on to the electrodes and the ion bombardment energy on to the electrodes can be controlled independently. There are two separate regimes in which this occurs. At large electrode separation, the ion current is controlled by varying the total discharge current, J lf + J hf . At small electrode separations, the ion flux can be controlled by varying the high frequency power source. In both regimes, the energy of the ions bombarding the electrodes is then determined by the low frequency voltage. A consequence of using dual frequencies to power the device is that the sheath width increases linearly as the low frequency power source is increased. This results in the dimensions of the bulk plasma decreasing, causing the electron temperature to increase for devices with electrode separations that are of comparable size to the electrode separation. In order to better understand the underlying physics involved within these devices an analytical global model has been developed which can explain many of the characteristics observed in the simulations.