Experimental and numerical investigations of the phase-shift effect in capacitively coupled discharges

The phase-shift effect has been investigated by a Langmuir probe and a fluid model in Ar capacitively coupled plasmas at 50 mTorr. In the discharge, two sources with the same frequency, i.e., 27.12 MHz, are applied on the top and bottom electrodes simultaneously, and the phase shift between them varies from 0 to π. It is found that the electron density has an off-axis peak near the radial edge when the phase difference is equal to 0 due to the electrostatic edge effect, and the best radial uniformity is observed at a phase difference equal to π. Furthermore, when the voltage increases, the best radial uniformity is obtained at lower phase shift values. Moreover, the electron energy probability function has a bi-temperature structure at all the selected phase differences at r = 1–15 cm. The evolution of the plasma characteristics with the phase difference implies that the best radial uniformity can be obtained, by balancing the electrostatic edge effect and the phase shift effect