Study of an RF discharge with mercury and argon: Effect of argon metastable quenching by mercury reactions

A planar one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation with Monte Carlo Collision (XPDP1) has been used to study 13.56 MHz mercury/argon discharge including metastable species for mercury and argon. It was used 1 Torr for argon and 0.05 Torr for mercury. Reaction such as argon metastable quenching by mercury atoms is taken into account for the mixture. It was found that this reaction is important in determining the metastable profiles for this mixture. The electron energy distribution function is plotted for mixture and for mercury at 0.05 Torr. It is slightly convex for the mixture, typical for high pressure discharge and concave for pure low pressure mercury plasma