Particle-In-Cell Monte-Carlo Simulation of Capacitive RF Discharges: Comparison with Experimental Data

Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations with Monte Carlo collision (MCC) are performed in argon capacitive rf discharges for the comparison with experimental data. The electron density and electron temperature along with the electron energy probability function are calculated for various gas pressures. It is shown that the sufficient number of simulation particles is one of the critical conditions for the reliability of PIC-MCC simulation. From the simulation with a large number of superparticles, a good agreement with experimental data measured by Godyak et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 65 (1990) 996] is obtained.