journal article

Journal Article

Applied Physics Letters. 1992, 61(25), p. 2973-2975

Phase transitions of dense systems of charged "dust" grains in plasmas

American Institute of Physics Inc.

English

1992-12-21

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.108035

R. T. Farouki and S. Hamaguchi, Appl. Phys. Lett. 61, 2973 (1992) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.108035

The behavior of "dust" grains (particulates) in microelectronics process plasmas has been studied using N-body simulations. Grains are assumed to be negatively charged and interact through a screened Coulomb potential Φ(r). The dimensionless parameters κ=a/λ and Γ=Φ(a)/k BT characterize the thermodynamics of the particulate system, where λ is the ion Debye length, a=(3/4πnD)1/3 is the mean intergrain distance, and nD and T are the dust density and temperature. The simulations exhibit a transition between "fluid" and "solid" phases at a critical value Γc that depends on κ and weakly on the system history (i.e., whether it "melts" from an ordered state or "freezes" from a random one).

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Appl. Phys. Lett. 61, 2973 (1992) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.108035.

78512

Phase transitions of dense systems of charged "dust" grains in plasmas

American Institute of Physics Inc.

English

1992-12-21

Applied Physics Letters

61

25

2973

2975

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.108035

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/78512