Proposal Number: ECS-9632377 Principal Investigator: John Scharer/University of Wisconsin Title: Physics and Simulation of Helicon Plasma Sources Abstract This research will provide a coordinated theoretical, computational and experimental research program on helicon plasma sources. These high density efficient sources are of interest for a variety of applications: neutral beam sub-micron etching of semiconductors, processing of large flat panel display, materials surface modification, use as a large volume plasma source for space simulations and for basic plasma source and wave propagation studies. Despite strong interest in these source few detailed simulations have been carried out to better model and understand helicon sources. The proposed study is very through and will address several important points. Among these are: incorporation of off diagonal hot plasmas dielectric tensor terms which describe transit time damping as well as Landau process, into the ANTENA2 code (developed by Professor Scharer) which is used to describe 3-D wave fields and radial collisional and collisionless power absorption for different helicon antenna coil configurations and radial plasma profiles. Also the ANTENA2 code will be interfaced to the INDUCT95 transport code to examine the self-consistent plasma profile evolution and the possibly differing roles of bulk and fast electrons as observed in experiments. The availability of the INDUCT95 code free of charge from an independent collaboration is a major gain to the proposed effort. The independent collaborators wants the opportunity to develop the INDUCT95 transport code in tandem with the ANTENA2 code. Also, as a service to the community, the ANTENA2 code will be made generally available to other researchers during the source of the grant to answer substantial requests for the code.
