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
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.
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2010