CAREER: Fundamental Investigations of Atmospheric-Pressure Glow Discharges

这项工作的目的是提供一个严格的理解大气压辉光放电（APGD）。这种新型等离子体可以在室温和大气压下产生大量的活性化学物质，并有可能彻底改变等离子体处理技术。研究工作主要包括以下几个方面：(1)建立计算速度快的一维APGD轴向结构预测物理模型；(2)研究体流/等离子体动力学相互作用的二维模型；(3)利用随时间变化的齐次电子玻尔兹曼解算器分析电子能量分布函数；(4)进行实验规模的APGD实验，以协助模型验证和探索放电现象，包括放电模式的视觉表征，以建立稳定边界作为放电几何形状和操作参数的函数，以及放电的电学表征；(5)研究了一种新的基于apgd的硅氧化工艺，该工艺有望应用于超薄集成电路的栅极氧化形成。

The objective of this effort is to provide a rigorous understanding of atmospheric-pressure glow discharges (APGD). This new class of plasmas can produce large amounts of active chemical species near room temperature and atmospheric pressure and has potential to revolutionize plasma-based processing technologies. The research activities have the following components: (1) a computationally fast, one-dimensional physical model for prediction of APGD axial structure; (2) a two-dimensional model for investigating bulk flow/plasma dynamics interactions; (3) analysis of the electron energy distribution function using a homogeneous, time-dependent electron Boltzman solver; (4) a bench-scale APGD experiment to assist in model validation and to explore the discharge phenomena, including visual characterization of discharge modes to establish stability boundaries as a function of discharge geometry and operating parameters, and electrical characterization of the discharge; and (5) investigation of a novel APGD-based silicon oxidation process with potential application in ultrathin integrated circuit gate-oxide formation.