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Tailored-waveform excitation of capacitively coupled plasmas and the electrical asymmetry effect

Unequal areas of the powered and grounded electrodes in single-frequency capacitively coupled plasmas (CCPs) are well-known to generate a DC self-bias voltage and an asymmetric plasma response. By instead applying non-sinusoidal waveforms composed of multiple harmonics—referred to in the literature as arbitrary waveforms, multi-harmonic waveforms or tailored waveforms—an asymmetric plasma response and a DC self-bias can also be produced; even for perfectly geometrically symmetric systems. This electrical asymmetry effect (EAE) has opened the doors to a wide range of novel ideas and interesting new physics that could allow limitations between the control of the ion flux and ion energy in traditional CCPs to be broken; thus helping to develop next-generation industrial plasma processing reactors. This review is dedicated to the current status of the EAE, and highlights important theoretical, numerical and experimental work in the field that has contributed to our understanding.