The fast imaging study of sputtering magnetron plasmas reveals amazingly varied and "even more .... than anticipated" structures, sub-structures and changes thereof in these plasmas. This is apparently true even for DC plasmas that appear visually stable and quiescent. Please see the abstract attached.
Can we model these plasmas? Are such plasma flares, discrete ionization zones, reversals with respect to expected E x B direction and other features predicted? In detail?
The authors write: "The discovery of reversal moving direction, plasma flares and sub-structures greatly modified and promoted the particle transport theory governed by zone-related instabilities and turbulence." Is such particle transport theory sufficient to calculate the overall plasma structure and time evolution, as a complete or isolated system? Or is the state of the art more-or-less that we can use particle transport theory to estimate plasma features and trends in local plasma zones, if we can measure some parameters of those zones. (Even this latter would be quite fruitful to help elucidate plasma behavior.)
Conference Paper Sub-structures and structural changes in ionization zones in...
Dr. Rao: I understand that most of the same phenomena are observed in both DC and pulsed sputter magentrons. I believe the subject abstract from Yang et al was mostly about DC plasmas. They mention prior studies on HiPIMS merely to point out that the direction of rotation is sometimes opposite from DC magnetrons (as well as possibly other differences). But my understanding is DC magnetron plasmas are quite complex.
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