Development of a hybrid Helicon-ECR plasma source

摘要

By combining a Helicon plasma source at a power of 2500 W (13.56 MHz) and an ECR microwave plasma source at a power of 200 W (2.45 GHz) a new hybrid plasma source was developed. The two methods rely on the same physics where the gas power absorption occurs between the ion cyclotron frequency and the electron cyclotron frequency but at two different heating frequencies (13.56 MHz and 3.54 GHz) simultaneously with the presence of 950 G axial magnetic field. Electron temperature was the order of 1 eV in this type of hybrid discharge. The discharge can be used to study a variety of physical phenomena with applications in ion source development and thruster physics.