Characteristics of probe current harmonics based on various applied voltage waveforms in low temperature plasmas

Abstract

The characteristics of probe currents induced by applying various probe voltage waveforms, such as sinusoidal, sawtooth, square, and triangular, were investigated at a floating potential. It was found that the measured probe currents have many harmonics depending on the voltage waveforms. This was mainly due to the nonlinearity of the sheath in the plasma and was analyzed using the fast Fourier transform and a circuit model. By applying a triangular voltage waveform to a probe, plasma parameters such as electron temperature and plasma density could be obtained and compared to those of a single Langmuir probe and a floating harmonic method.