Experimental and PIC MCC study of electron cooling - re-heating and plasma density decay in low pressure rf ccp argon afterglowстатьяИсследовательская статья
Статья опубликована в высокорейтинговом журнале
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 25 марта 2020 г.
Аннотация:In this work, the experimental and theoretical study of the pulsed discharge in argon has been carried out. The experimental data on the dynamics of the electron density, electron temperature, and plasma potential have been obtained by probe measurements (by using hairpin and Langmuir probes) in the afterglow between two RF pulses. These dynamics are thoroughly analyzed by comparison with the numerical results of the kinetic PIC MC simulations. The main processes caused electron cooling have been revealed for two different time stages. The first afterglow stage is described by the rapid decrease of the electron temperature. During this stage, the inelastic electron collisions with Ar atoms in the ground state play an important role in the electron cooling. During the second long-scale stage, only the diffusion along the electron energy scale via Coulomb or elastic collisions can provide the observed effect of the gradual electron cooling. The effects of elastic and Coulomb collisions on the electron cooling have been separated and analyzed on the base of PIC MC simulations. The temporal evolution of the electron concentration spatial distribution and the plasma boundary sheaths size has been also analyzed on the base of 1D PIC MC simulation results. A good agreement of the probe measurements data and the PIC simulation results on the plasma density, ambipolar potential and electron temperature is observed. To perform the more detailed study of EEDF and electron temperature dynamics, the relative intensity of Ar(2p1)→Ar(1s2) emission at 750 nm has been measured. A very good agreement between the measured emission intensity and the calculated excitation rate of Ar(2p1) at different time scales validates the electron temperature temporal dynamics obtained by the used PIC model.