Plasma potential adjustment circuit

A plasma processing system comprising:

• a plasma‑contacting electrode;
• a substrate support configured to support a substrate exposed to a plasma;
• at least one plasma power supply configured to deliver pulsed plasma power to the plasma‑contacting electrode and bias power to the substrate support;
• one or more sensors configured to measure time‑varying plasma‑related electrical signals;
• and
• a controller comprising a processor and a non‑transitory computer‑readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, cause the controller to
• adjust a plasma sheath potential adjacent to the substrate to control an ion energy distribution of the plasma by actively generating or modifying a waveform shape of the pulsed plasma power applied to the plasma‑contacting electrode.

A plasma processing system comprising:

• a plasma-contacting electrode;
• a substrate support configured to support a substrate exposed to a plasma;
• at least one pulsed power supply configured to deliver pulsed plasma power to the plasma-contacting electrode and bias power to the substrate support;
• a potential adjustment circuit coupled between the plasma-contacting electrode and the at least one pulsed power supply along a transmission path of the pulsed plasma power;
• at least one sensor configured to measure time-varying plasma-related electrical signals during plasma processing;
• and
• a controller operatively coupled to the potential adjustment circuit and the at least one pulsed power supply, the controller comprising a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the plasma processing system to
• adjust a plasma sheath potential adjacent to the substrate to control an ion energy distribution of the plasma by actively controlling the potential adjustment circuit to modify a voltage shape of the pulsed plasma power applied to the plasma‑contacting electrode.