  When a plasma sheath forms next to a dielectric wall, material properties
determine electron absorption and reflection from the surface, impacting the
sheath formation and structure. The low energy regime of this interaction is
often not considered rigorously in emissive sheath simulations, but may be
modeled from quantum mechanical first principles, and has important
applications to plasma thrusters and fusion devices. In this work, low energy
electron reflection from the wall is implemented as a boundary condition in a
continuum kinetic framework and the sheath is simulated for dielectric material
parameters in high and low emission cases. The results presented here
demonstrate that the material parameters can have significant effect on the
resulting sheath profile and particle distribution functions. Surfaces with
high reflection rates see the formation of a space-charge limited sheath.

Plasma Physics;Computational Physics