Abstract: Plasma-immersion ion implantation (PIII) is a technique for implanting ions into conducting, semiconducting and insulating objects. In PIII, the object being treated is immersed in a plasma and pulsed to a large negative voltage (=-1 to-100 kV). The resulting sheath expands into the ambient plasma, extracting ions and accelerating them to the target. PIII has advantages over beam-line implantation in that large surfaces can be rapidly implanted, irregularly-shaped objects can be implanted without target manipulation, and surfaces that are not line-of-sight accessible can be treated. A two-dimensional, self-consistent model of plasma dynamics appropriate for PIII is described. The model is a hybrid, with Boltzmann electrons and kinetic ions, where the ion Vlasov equation is solved using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. Solutions of the model give the time dependence of the ion flux, energy and impact angle at the target surface, together with the evolution of the sheath.

Key words: plasma-immersion ion implantation, plasma sheath, particle- in-cell simulation