Patent ID: 8055489

Claim:
A method of using a circuit simulator to simulate an effect of trapped charge in an electrostatic chuck on the electrostatic chuck performance, the method comprising: creating a trapped-charge electrical model by coupling a trapped charge capacitor to a gap-trapped resistor and to a grain resistor; selecting a capacitance value C trapped for the trapped charge capacitor; selecting a resistance value R gap-trapped for the gap-trapped resistor; selecting a resistance value R grain for the grain resistor; creating an electrostatic chuck simulation circuit by coupling a substrate-to-chuck interface gap capacitor with a substrate-to-chuck interface gap resistor, a substrate resistor, at least one cable resistor, and a plurality of voltage sources; configuring at least one of the plurality of voltage sources to provide a time-varying voltage; coupling the trapped-charge electrical model with the electrostatic chuck simulation circuit; and executing a first simulation in the circuit simulator to determine time-varying voltage and currents responses within a plurality of circuit nodes in the electrostatic chuck simulation circuit.