Search for: All records

Abstract In an atmospheric DC glow discharge with liquid anode, the plasma attachment under certain conditions self-organize into coherent patterns at the anode. Optical emission spectroscopy revealed that attachment emission consists primarily of the second positive system of nitrogen N2(C-B) whose excitation energy is low and sensitive to the change of electron energy distribution. Besides the electrons, negative ions can also accumulate in the anode sheath and affect the local space charge. It has been conjectured that these negative ions play a role in pattern formation at the anode surface. In this work, the role of oxygen negative ions was explored. It was found that the establishment of anode patterns requires at least a 7 % volume fraction of oxygen in the ambient gas. Results showed that at least in this work, O2- is the dominant negative ion species and has a density ~10^13 cm^-3. While the presence of oxygen appears crucial to pattern formation, this study indicated that the mere presence of the negative ions itself was not sufficient for pattern formation, suggesting a more complex mechanism involving electronegative species must be present. In fact, it was found that even when as many as 67 % of negative ions in the plasma were detached, no obvious geometry changes were observed in the self-organized pattern. 

Abstract In pursuit of diamond nanoparticles, a capacitively-coupled radio frequency flow-through plasma reactor was operated with methane-argon gas mixtures. Signatures of the final product obtained microscopically and spectroscopically indicated that the product was an amorphous form of graphite. This result was consistent irrespective of combinations of the macroscopic reactor settings. To explain the observed synthesis output, measurements of C₂and gas properties were carried out by laser-induced fluorescence and optical emission spectroscopy. Strikingly, the results indicated a strong gas temperature gradient of 100 K per mm from the center of the reactor to the wall. Based on additional plasma imaging, a model of hot constricted region (filamentation region) was then formulated. It illustrated that, while the hot constricted region was present, the bulk of the gas was not hot enough to facilitate diamondsp³formation: characterized by much lower reaction rates, when compared tosp²,sp³formation kinetics are expected to become exponentially slow. This result was further confirmed by experiments under identical conditions but with a H₂/CH₄mixture, where no output material was detected: if graphiticsp²formation was expected as the main output material from the methane feedstock, atomic hydrogen would then be expected to etch it awayin situ, such that the net production of thatsp²-hybridized solid material is nearly a zero. Finally, the crucial importance of gas heating was corroborated by replacing RF with microwave source whereby facilesp³production was attained with H₂/CH₄gas mixture. 

Nonthermal plasmas in contact with liquids have been shown to generate a variety of reactive species capable of initiating reduction–oxidation (redox) reactions at the electrochemically active plasma–liquid interface. In conventional electrochemical cells, selective redox chemistry is achieved by controlling the reduction potential at the solid electrode–electrolyte interface by applying a bias via an external circuit. In the case of plasma–liquid systems, an analogous means of tuning the reduction potential near the interface has not clearly been identified. When treated as a floating surface, the liquid is expected to adopt a net negative charge to balance the flux of hot electrons and relatively cold positive ions. The reduction potential near the plasma–liquid interface is hypothesized to be proportional to the floating potential, which can be approximated using an analytical model provided the plasma parameters are known. Herein, we present a framework for correlating the electron density and electron temperature of a noble gas plasma jet to the reduction potential near the plasma–liquid interface. The plasma parameters were acquired for an argon atmospheric plasma jet in contact with an aqueous solution by means of laser Thomson scattering. The reduction potential was determined using identical reference electrodes to measure the potential difference between the plasma–liquid interface and bulk solution. Interestingly, the measured reduction potentials near the plasma–liquid interface were found to be in good agreement with the model-predicted values determined using the plasma parameters obtained from the Thomson scattering experiments.