A one-dimensional analysis of electron heating process in a weakly magnetized, inductively coupled plasma (MICP) is presented. It is found that the main difference in the heating process of a MICP from that of a usual unmagnetized ICP is in that circularly polarized wave modes can exist in the plasma. The right handed circularly polarized wave (R-wave) can propagate into the plasma and its amplitude can be enhanced by cavity resonance effect at an appropriate chamber length and external magnetic field strength. The enhanced R-wave amplitude can raise the heating efficiency significantly. It is also found that a bounce cyclotron-resonance effect can exist, which, however, is not as significant as the cavity resonance effect.

A theoretical study is made of the effects of radio frequency (rf) waves in the range of ion cyclotron frequency on interchange modes in mirror plasmas. A two-fluid cold plasma model including particle collisions is utilized for the investigation. Both the equilibrium ponderomotive force produced by the gradient of rf wave amplitude and the sideband wave coupling mechanism originated from the nonlinear beating between high frequency waves are taken into account. A tractable form of the dispersion relation for the interchange mode is obtained and applied to carrying out a parametric study. Key parameters affecting the stability boundary are identified and the consequences of the parameter variation on the stability boundary change are analyzed near ion cyclotron resonance region.

In a modern plasma etching device, the plasma sheath potential is usually superposed by an externally driven oscillating voltage to enhance and control the bombarding ion energy. A collisionless particle simulation is used to study the variation of average kinetic energy 〈K〉(νrf) of bombarding ions as a function of a wide range of sheath oscillation frequency νrf (0.1νpi⩽νrf⩽10νpi, where νpi is the ion plasma frequency). It is found that a resonance phenomenon between the ion transit motion and the sheath oscillation can yield a strongly peaked enhancement of 〈K〉(νrf) near νrf≃0.5νpi. Ion species with different mass show the peaks at different νrf. The relative importance of different ion molecules in an ion-enhanced etching process will be sensitive to νrf. This phenomenon may allow a reduction of the undesirable capacitive coupling by optimizing νrf to yield an enhanced 〈K〉 of desired ion species at low applied voltages.