Modeling and Simulation of Technical Plasmas

Original title: Challenges in the Modelling of Low-Temperature Plasma Sources Elektrotechnisches Kolloquium. Since its inception in the beginning of the twentieth century, plasma science has grown to a major field of science. Lowtemperature plasma sources and gas discharges can be found in domestic and industrial applications, and can be observed in nature as well. Examples of domestic discharges are those used in lighting and plasma display panels (PDP's). In industry, plasma sources are widely used for materials processing. Applications range from feature etching in the fabrication of electronic devices, deposition, wettability improvement and bio-medical treatment. Due to its scientific and industrial relevance, plasma and gas discharge science has been exercised both experimentally as well as theoretically for a long time. More recently, the advent of electronic computing has made it possible to obtain approximate numerical solutions for sources that were too complex to handle analytically before. After providing a brief, general introduction to plasma science, we will discuss the state of the art in plasma modelling at Eindhoven university. We will discuss the scientific and software-engineering challenges that we were facing when we constructed the freely available plasma simulation toolbox Plasimo. We will present some of Plasimo's physical sub-models. Simulation results for various applications will be presented and commented on