Emulation of Plasma Load Reactances by Saturation Control of Low-Permeability Inductors

Power amplifiers and tunable matching networks for plasma generation systems are being continuously advanced, and recent innovations have shown tremendous improvements in their size, efficiency, and capability. These improvements must ultimately be validated on a live plasma chamber, but this is costly and time-consuming, and debugging errors or failures is a challenge owing to the highly dynamic nature of the plasma and the experimental prototype nature of the advancements. This work addresses this challenge by developing a reactive load emulation system that can mimic the inductive reactance of a live plasma chamber. This includes a study of the saturation characteristics of low-permeability, high-frequency materials, demonstration of the suitability of this method for plasma emulation, and the design of an inductor array platform which verifies the approach.