Characteristics of a plasma sheath in a radio frequency biased voltage

The exact equations of a radio frequency (rf) sheath driven by rf-biased voltage are solved numerically. All of the sheath characteristics for an arbitrary rf frequency are obtained, including the time-dependent ion density distributions, the ion current density, and ion kinetic energy at the electrode. Moreover, the ion energy distributions (IEDs) impinging on the rf-biased electrode are calculated, which match the experiment result [M. A. Sobolewski, J. K. Olthoff, and Y. C. Wang, J. Appl. Phys. 85, 3966 (1999)] exactly. The results show that the rf frequency is a crucial parameter for determining the spatiotemporal characteristic and the shape of IEDs.