Plasma processes are routinely used in a number of industrial settings, for applications varying from silicon chip etching to thin-film deposition for solar cells. In the majority of these cases the techniques and procedures used to create the required plasmas are obtained by initial experimental trial and error. Thus, this advancement has been led in a large part by the technical ability of the engineers in charge of the equipment. This model has worked so far, however, with more and more complex plasma chemistries being developed and the continual drive for efficiency, simulations are becoming another implement in the engineer's toolset. This poses interesting requirements on any simulation software which is aimed toward industry, such as: reliability, simulation speed and ease of set-up. It is the goal of the new coding project at UCL and Quantemol Ltd. to tackle these issues and more, to produce a simulation tool specifically targeted to industrial applications.

 

This new software will allow the simulation of full 3D geometries, implementing a finite element method (FEM) to solve the required partial differential equations and a hybrid simulation method to improve runtime. We intend to implement the following features:

 

 

At the conference the latest research issues about, and the development towards the above features will be reported.