Modeling of a breakdown voltage in microdischarges

Non-equilibrium plasmas have been used as one of the principal technologies for development of microelectronics and they are the basis for the development of new generations of nano-electronics devices required for 65 and 40 nm technologies. Microdischarges recently have become more common in everyday life. Technology of plasma etching has enabled us to develop such discharges and the field of microdischarges has grown into the most interesting field of the physics of collisional non-equilibrium plasmas. Recently, an effort to fabricate microplasma sources that can be integrated with other MEMS devices to form larger Microsystems has been made. Plasma-based microsystems can find application in bio-microelectro- mechanical system (bio-MEMS) sterilization, small-scale materials processing and microchemical analysis systems. However, integrability requires not only a size reduction, but also an understanding of the physics governing the new small-scale discharges. In this paper, we have performed modeling of a breakdown voltage by using Particle-in-Cell/Monte Carlo collision (PIC/MCC) code taking into account the secondary electron emission due to a high field.