The plasma transport is being represented by a drift-diffusion formalism. Therefore, the orbital motion of ions which results in the plasma shielding distance around the particle being given by the linearized Debye length cannot be resolved. As a consequence, the shielding distances produced by the model are best characterized by the electron Debye length. Since it is the ratio of the agglomerate size to the Debye shielding length which is the important parameter, we have chosen appropriately sized particles so that this ratio is of the desired magnitude. The calculation of the ion drag cross section, which is performed using a Monte Carlo simulation, does resolve the proper orbital motion and so the resulting cross sections should be accurate.
Example mesh for fluid simulation.
Potential, surface charge density for a single-sphere agglomerate Fig. This work is supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the National Science Foundation, Advanced Research Projects Administration and the University of Wisconsin ERC for Plasma Aided Manufacturing.