title: Development of simple designs of multitip probe diagnostic systems for RF plasma characterization.
abstract: Multitip probes are very useful diagnostics for analyzing and controlling the physical phenomena occurring in low temperature discharge plasmas. However, DC biased probes often fail to perform well in processing plasmas. The objective of the work was to deduce simple designs of DC biased multitip probes for parametric study of radio frequency plasmas. For this purpose, symmetric double probe, asymmetric double probe, and symmetric triple probe diagnostic systems and their driving circuits were designed and tested in an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) generated by a 13.56 MHz radio frequency (RF) source. Using I-V characteristics of these probes, electron temperature, electron number density, and ion saturation current was measured as a function of input power and filling gas pressure. An increasing trend was noticed in electron temperature and electron number density for increasing input RF power whilst a decreasing trend was evident in these parameters when measured against filling gas pressure. In addition, the electron energy probability function (EEPF) was also studied by using an asymmetric double probe. These studies confirmed the non-Maxwellian nature of the EEPF and the presence of two groups of the energetic electrons at low filling gas pressures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia ; Department of Physics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan.
authors.forename: M Y
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Naz
authors.affiliation: Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia ; Department of Physics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shukrullah
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan ; Department of Electrical Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghaffar
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.
authors.forename: N U
authors.initials: NU
authors.lastname: Rehman
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D003217:Conductometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004566:Electrodes; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D058626:Plasma Gases / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry*; D011846:Radio Waves; D014159:Transducers
chemical_list: D058626:Plasma Gases