Particle-in-cell simulation of hydrogen discharge driven by combined radio frequency and pulse sources

A particle-in-cell plus Monte Carlo collision model is employed to investigate the low pressure hydrogen capacitive discharge driven by combined radio frequency (rf) and pulse sources. This work focuses on the evolutions of electron energy and density in the discharge to illustrate the role that a short pulse source plays. The simulation results show that an extra short pulse source can modulate the electron energy effectively: in the early and late pulse-on times, the electron energy is much higher than that in the single rf source discharge; during the pulse-off time, the electron energy can drop gradually to a low value. It is also found that a few peaks of attenuated electron energy appear periodically just after the pulse voltage drops to zero. The similar phenomena can also be found in the production rate of highly vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules. Physical mechanisms responsible for these phenomena are discussed. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3495982]