In the simulation of plasma processes, minimizing the error associated with the electric field calculation in the vicinity of the sheath is an important consideration. The sheath length scale compared to the plasma size, and the fact that the electric fields must be solved for self‐consistency with equations describing the plasma chemistry, make the electric field solution particularly expensive. Because an internal electric field is calculated based on the density of charged particles, it is necessary to obtain the density of charged particles correctly but at minimum possible expense. We describe an electric field simulation with high speed and good accuracy made possible by the description of the charge density by spline functions. Previously, we have taken advantage of the orthogonality of the Legendre polynomial in our methodology described as LPWS (Legendre Polynomial Weighted Sampling). Sampling with other orthogonal functions is also possible and we have thus generalized our method. A generalization called Orthogonal Polynomial Weighted Sampling (OPWS), in which the coefficients of the B‐spline function are obtained from the coefficients of the orthogonal expansion, has been developed and is described in this paper. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 169(1): 1–8, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (http://www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20769

SUMMARYIn the simulation of plasma processes, minimizing the error associated with the electric field calculation in the vicinity of the sheath is an important consideration. The sheath length scale compared to the plasma size, and the fact that the electric fields must be solved for self-consistency with equations describing the plasma chemistry, make the electric field solution particularly expensive. Because an internal electric field is calculated based on the density of charged particles, it is necessary to obtain the density of charged particles correctly but at minimum possible expense. We describe an electric field simulation with high speed and good accuracy made possible by the description of the charge density by spline functions. Previously, we have taken advantage of the orthogonality of the Legendre polynomial in our methodology described as LPWS (Legendre Polynomial Weighted Sampling). Sampling with other orthogonal functions is also possible and we have thus generalized our method. A generalization called Orthogonal Polynomial Weighted Sampling (OPWS), in which the coefficients of the B-spline function are obtained from the coefficients of the orthogonal expansion, has been developed and is described in this paper.