We present a full finite element analysis for plasma discharge in etching process of semiconductor circuit. The charge transport equations of hydrodynamic diffusion-drift model and the electric field equation were numerically solved in a fully coupled system by using a standard finite element procedure for transient analysis. The proposed method was applied to a real plasma reactor in order to characterize the plasma sheath that is closely related to the yield of the etching process. Throughout the plasma discharge analysis, the base electrode of reactor was tested and modified for improving the uniformity around the wafer edge. The experiment and numerical results were examined along with SEM data of etching quality. The feasibility and usefulness of the proposed method was shown by both numerical and experimental results.