Manipulation of Dusty Plasma Properties via Driving Voltage Waveform Tailoring in a Capacitive Radiofrequency Discharge

Dust particle layers are routinely established in radio-frequency plasmas, where their levitation height is defined by the balance of forces acting on the particles. Here, based on particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate the effect of excitation waveform on this levitation height, by using harmonic and alternating-phase waveforms that may as well include an additional dc component. We also demonstrate that the dust charge can be tuned by the properties of the excitation waveform and suggest that the dust component of the plasma can be heated through a variation of the excitation waveforms via a mechanism similar to second-order Fermi acceleration.