Guest Editorial Special Issue on Modeling and ...

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 35, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2007

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Modeling and Simulation of Collisional Low-Temperature Plasmas

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OLLISIONAL low-temperature glow-discharge plasmas find application in a variety of fields, including plasmabased materials processing and surface modification, lighting, plasma displays, lasers, and even environmental remediation. Modeling and simulation can enhance our understanding of plasma transport and chemistry and help develop rational methods for design, control, and optimization of plasma reactors and processes. Significant advances have been made in modeling and simulation of glow-discharge plasmas. Models and simulations of the electron-velocity-distribution function and associated swarm parameters, plasma transport and chemistry, and plasma–sheath and plasma–surface interactions have been advanced. Self-consistent simulations of reactive-gas plasmas in complex multidimensional geometries are feasible. At the same time, powerful plasma diagnostics are used to perform stringent tests of mathematical model predictions. The synergy between modeling, simulation, and laboratory experiments is invaluable for further improving our understanding of glow discharges and for developing better simulation tools with predictive capabilities over a wider range of the parameter space. In this Special Issue, we have included contributions in the following areas: electron and ion transport, low-pressure discharges, high-pressure nonthermal discharges, plasma–sheath and plasma–surface interactions, and magnetically enhanced discharges. Fluid, particle (e.g., particle-in-cell with Monte Carlo collisions), as well as hybrid simulation approaches are included. Several contributions combine modeling and/or simulation with experiments.

The guest editors would like to thank the authors for the high quality of their contributions. They would also like to thank Dr. S. J. Gitomer, Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, for his continual support and encouragement and A. Larkin for ensuring a smooth flow of the manuscripts through the IEEE web-based manuscript-handling system and her timely and accurate response to questions regarding the system. Last but not least, they would also like to thank the referees for their thorough and timely review of the manuscripts.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPS.2007.907550 0093-3813/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE

DEMETRE J. ECONOMOU, Guest Editor Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-4004 USA TOSHIAKI MAKABE, Guest Editor Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering Keio University Yokohama 223-8522, JAPAN

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 35, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2007

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Demetre J. Economou received the Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1986. Since 1986, he has been with the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX, where he is currently a John and Rebecca Moores Professor and the Associate Chairman. His research interests include plasma modeling and simulation, plasma diagnostics, microplasmas, nanopantography, and neutral beam sources. He is the author or coauthor of almost 150 scientific articles and book chapters in these areas. He has organized several international symposia and has made nearly 200 technical presentations in conferences, industry, and academia, including 60 invited talks. Dr. Economou is a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society. In addition to this Special Issue, he has served as a Guest Editor of Special Issues of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE on the modeling of low-temperature plasmas published in August 1995, October 1999, and August 2003.

Toshiaki Makabe received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan. In 1975, he joined Keio University, where he has been a Professor with the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering since 1991. He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology. His research field is in plasma electronics related to low temperature, nonequilibrium plasmas for material processing, and to the electron (ion) swarm-transport theory based on the Boltzmann equation. His research interests are in the computational design of a plasma source interacting with wall (wafer) and of damage-free plasma etching. He developed a vertically integrated computer-aided design for device processing (VicAddress) in 2000. VicAddress will predict and design a plasma structure and etching on a wafer and to predict electrical damage to lower nanoscale elements under charging in future plasma etching. In addition, 3-D emission (absorption)-selected computerized tomography (CT) of low-temperature plasma has been established in his laboratory, and the CT images form a counterpart in numerical prediction. He organized the 21st century Center-of-Excellence program for optical- and electronic-device technology for access networks in Japan. He is the author of Plasma Electronics: Applications in Microelectronic Device Fabrication (Taylor & Francis; 2006), Advances in Low Temperature RF Plasmas; Basis for Process Design (Elsevier; 2002), Plasma Electronics (in Japanese) (Baifukan; 1999), among others. He has published more than 160 journal papers and presented more than 300 conference papers. He had had the opportunity to give his invited talk at more than 50 international conferences. He granted 20 Ph.D. degrees to his students in the field of plasma electronics. Dr. Makabe is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Japan Society of Applied Physics.