Substantial changes in the characteristics of a microwave plasma due to combining argon and hydrogen
Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: Upon the addition of 5% argon to a hydrogen plasma, the Lyman α emission was observed to increase by about an order of magnitude, whereas xenon control had no effect. With a microwave input power of 40 W, the gas temperature of an argon plasma increased from 400 to over 750 °C with the addition of 3% flowing hydrogen, whereas the 400 °C temperature of a xenon plasma run under identical conditions was essentially unchanged with the addition of hydrogen. The average hydrogen-atom temperature of the argon-hydrogen plasma was measured to be 110-130 eV versus ≈3 eV for pure hydrogen or xenon-hydrogen. Mechanisms such as Stark broadening or acceleration of charged species due to high fields (e.g. over 10 kV cm -1 ) cannot be invoked to explain the results with argon since the electron density was low and no high field was observationally present. The electron temperature T e for the argon-hydrogen and xenon-hydrogen plasmas was 11 600±5% and 6500±5% K, respectively, compared to 4800±5% and 4980±5% K for argon and xenon alone, respectively. The observation of higher temperatures corresponding to three possibly independent plasma parameters for only argon with hydrogen may be explained by the release of energy from atomic hydrogen by a resonant nonradiative energy-transfer mechanism.
Source: New Journal of Physics
Authors: R L Mills, P Ray
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,610
OpenAlex ID: W2117028689