Speaker
Description
In this study, we report on preliminary results from plasma-kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, investigating the plasma discharge phenomenon in a DC magnetron sputtering device for thin film deposition. As the quality of the sputtered films depend on the plasma chemical composition and interaction with the target material, it is important to understand and characterise the underlying plasma discharge process for different operating conditions like magnetic field, pressure, choice of background gas etc. Of particular interest is also the nature of plasma instabilities for different operating conditions and their influence on the sputtering process. We will also explore possibilities of comparing PIC simulation results with experiments in the future.