Bremen 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 18: Theory and Modeling II

P 18.4: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 15. März 2017, 15:30–15:45, HS 2010

3d Energy-Conserving Implicit Particle-in-Cell (PIC) Code for Simulations of Magnetized Plasmas — •Denis Eremin — Institute for Theoretical Engineering, Ruhr University Bochum, Univeristätsstrasse 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany

One of the most heavily used tools for the thin film deposition applications in plasma processing industry is magnetron discharge, operated in a broad range of different regimes, from the dc to the HiPIMS. Despite low pressure of the neutral gas characteristic of the sputtering regime in such devices, they have enhanced electron confinement and power deposition due to the magnetic field. Owing to the non-uniformities of the latter, the plasma density profile is also strongly non-uniform, exhibting very large gradient close to the cathode and relatively small gradient in the bulk plasma. Whereas the low pressure regime demands a kinetic modeling approach, standard PIC schemes often fail to adequately simulate such magnetized plasmas within reasonable computational time due to the numerical limitations on applicability of such schemes. This work proposes a novel energy-conserving implicit PIC approach with a non-uniform computational grid resolving the cathode sheath region. The new approach has fewer limitations and its ability to simulate early stages of HiPIMS discharges is demonstrated. The corresponding code is in part massively parallelized on GPU.

Financial support the German Research Foundation in the framework of the SFB-TR 87 project is greatly acknowledged.