Amy Wendt edited untitled.tex  over 8 years ago

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The plan described herein to develop advanced diagnostic tools for low-temperature molecular plasmas will make a contribution toward the ultimate goal of ``predictive design'' of plasma processes. In particular, we seek to go beyond standard OES (optical emission spectroscopy) by making use of previously untapped potential of the glow emitted by the plasma. in short, our goal is to develop a non-invasive and easily-implemented diagnostic to quantify plasma properties,including electron temperature or EEDF, electron density and dissociation fraction, of central importance to many applications.   Diagnostic development will follow two distinct approaches. A)  {\bf Molecular approaches to quantitative OES:   molecular  gas plasma spectroscopy (with a primary focus on oxygen).} This approach will require: 1) identification of suitable emission lines and bands, and 2) development of an optical emission model using published cross sections and reaction rates in order to quantify the relation between emission intensities pure oxygen plasmas),  and plasma parameters.  Plasma parameters, including electron temperature, will be determined as those values for which the model produces a `best fit' to experimentally measured spectra.  B) {\bf Rare-gas rare-gas  plasma spectroscopy in mixtures with molecular gases.} gases.  Plasma properties measured in this way with the proposed methods  will facilitate benchmarking of process simulations and will guide development and optimization of  plasma applications. Furthermore, fast data acquisition and analysis enabled by this approach quantitative OES  raises the possibility of use in a feedback loop for run-to-run or  real-time process control. {\bf MENTION community demand - cite plasma 2020, low temperature plasma report, etc.} While our proposed research builds on experience gained in developing OES-based diagnostics of rare gas plasmas, if successful, it will contribute non-invasive and easily implemented diagnostic tools in a new domain, that of molecular gas plasmas, applicable to a wide array of plasma process applications. However, compared to plasmas formed in atomic gases, even a {\it diatomic} molecular gas introduces both new scientific challenges and new potential rewards. Plasmas formed in diatomic gases contain many more species than rare gas plasmas, including atoms, diatomic molecules, larger molecules and metastable neutral species, as well as positive and negative atomic and molecular ions, some or all of which may undergo collisions leading to photon emission. As a result, emission models for such plasmas must include mechanisms not relevant for rare gas plasmas, such as electron collisional dissociative excitation as well excitation resulting from recombination of positive and negative ions. Many of these species are critically important in industrial applications, and an emission model including this mechanisms may enable determination of the concentration of multiple species, i