Patent ID: 8849585

Claim:
A method for automatically characterizing plasma during substrate processing in a plasma processing system, comprising: arranging a probe in a plasma processing chamber of said plasma processing system; connecting one end of a capacitor to said probe; selectively supplying an RF signal including RF bursts to another end of said capacitor; collecting a set of process data from said probe during substrate processing by measuring current supplied to said other end of said capacitor and voltage at said one end of said capacitor; identifying a relevancy range for said set of process data, wherein said relevancy range includes a subset of said set of process data collected after said capacitor begins discharging after one of said RF bursts and before said capacitor is fully discharged after said one of said RF bursts; determining a set of seed values based on said process data in said relevancy range; and employing said relevancy range and said set of seed values as initial values for curve fitting corresponding to said one of said RF bursts to reduce a number of curve-fitting iterations.