Eur. Phys. J. D 60, 505-516 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2010-00219-0

Spectroscopic measurements and electrical diagnostics of microhollow cathode discharges in argon flow at atmospheric pressure

¹ Departamento de Física, Laboratório de Óptica e Espectroscopia, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Pça Marechal Eduardo Gomes 50, 12 228-900, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
² Institute of Electronics, Bulgarian Academy of Science, 72 Tzarigradsko Chaussee, 1784 Sofia, Bulgaria

Corresponding author: ^a bogos@ita.br

Received: 22 April 2010
Revised: 19 July 2010
Published online: 30 August 2010

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the study of the electrical and optical characteristics of direct current microhollow cathode discharges (MHCD) in argon flow. Experiments have been carried out in order to determine the so-called Paschen's curves in a static open MHCD. Current-voltage characteristics were obtained as a function of the pressure and hole diameter. MHCD enable stable direct current discharge operation, which could be ignited for pressures ranging from 12 to 800 Torr, in a very wide range of current densities and electrodes materials. Optical emission spectroscopy and analysis of the spectral line broadening of plasma line emissions were performed in order to measure parameters such as electron number density (2–4 × 10¹⁴ cm, gas temperature (460–640 K), excitation temperature (~ 7000 K) and electron temperature (~ 8500 K), for current ranging from 7 to 15 mA. Lower gas temperature was measured compared to the static MHCD ones.