TEMPERATURE CORRECTION IN PROBE MEASUREMENTS

This work is devoted to experimental investigations of a decaying plasma using Langmuir probes. The gas pressure, the discharge current, and the moment of afterglow were selected to obtain probe characteristics in collisionless, intermediate, and drifting regimes of motion of charged particles. The manner in which the shape of the volt–ampere characteristics changes on passage from the collisionless motion to diffusion motion has been shown. A detailed analysis has been made of the source of errors arising when orbital-motion formulas or the logarithmic-operation method are applied to processing of the probe curves. It has been shown that neglect of collisions of charged particles in the probe layer leads to an ion-density value overstated more than three times, an electron-temperature value overstated two times, and an ion temperature overstated three to nine times. A model of interaction of charged particles in the probe layer has been proposed for correction of the procedure of determining temperature. Such an approach makes it possible to determine the space-charge layer in the probe, and also the value of the self-consistent fi eld. The use of the developed procedures gives good agreement between experimental and theoretical results
   
Author:  S. A. Gutsev
Keywords:  low-pressure plasma, afterglow plasma, Langmuir probes, orbital motion, volt–ampere characteristic, particle energy distribution function, electron temperature, space-charge layer
Page:  1163