METHES: A Monte Carlo collision code for the simulation of electron transport in low temperature plasmas

We present a freely available MATLAB code for the simulation of electron transport in arbitrary gas mixtures in the presence of uniform electric fields. For steady-state electron transport, the program provides the transport coefficients, reaction rates and the electron energy distribution function. The program uses established Monte Carlo techniques and is compatible with the electron scattering cross section files from the open-access Plasma Data Exchange Project LXCat. The code is written in object-oriented design, allowing the tracing and visualization of the spatiotemporal evolution of electron swarms and the temporal development of the mean energy and the electron number due to attachment and/or ionization processes. We benchmark our code with well-known model gases as well as the real gases argon, N2, O2, CF4, SF6 and mixtures of N2 and O2.

本报告推出一套开放获取的 MATLAB 编程代码，旨在模拟在均匀电场作用下任意气体混合物中的电子传输。针对稳态电子传输，该程序能够提供传输系数、反应速率以及电子能量分布函数。该程序采用成熟的蒙特卡洛技术，并兼容来自开放访问等离子体数据交换项目 LXCat 的电子散射截面文件。代码采用面向对象设计，便于追踪和可视化电子群的空间时间演化以及因吸附和/或电离过程引起的平均能量和电子数的时序发展。我们以已知的模型气体以及实际气体氩、氮气、氧气、CF4、SF6 以及氮气和氧气的混合物为基准，对代码进行了测试。