Across theassorted projects and research groups, many of the same technical questions can arise. For example, each group needs to know the gas and surface temperatures as well as the densities and energies of the various species making up the plasma, such as electrons, ions and free radicals. To help address some of these common issues and to provide an interconnection across the research areas, C-PAM has established two support staff positions in the areas of Plasma Diagnostics and Theory and Modeling. When an object is placed in a plasma, a number of processes occur simultaneously. C-PAM's approach involves the characterization and control of plasma conditions so as to optimize the desired process while minimizing the effects of undesired processes.
Characterization takes advantage of an extensive infrastructure in plasma gas phase diagnostics.
In addition, C-PAM has strong supporting work in Plasma Diagnostics and Theory and Modeling. Direction of individual projects is determined with input from C-PAM's various industrial partners. The theory and modeling group of the Center for Plasma Aided Manufacturing provides a set of tools for simulation and interpretation of plasma and semiconductor behavior. These tools have been developed to be accurate and applicable across a very wide range of physical situations. An extremely flexible approach to numerical solution of partial differential equations, which has been used extensively for sophisticated plasma and semiconductor modeling, is described and software made available at our website clerc.engr.wisc.edu and links from that site.