Testing of nickel-chrome alloy as a tip material for multi-tip langmuir probes

• Main Authors: Naz, M.Y., Shukrullah, S., Ghaffar, A., Shakir, I., Ullah, S., Sagir, M.
• Format: Article
• Published: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd 2014
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84905818835&doi=10.1142%2fS0218625X14500565&partnerID=40&md5=5df55c57769f570601499aebe4ba1144; http://eprints.utp.edu.my/32183/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

The electrostatic probes are considered to be the most powerful and experimentally simplest technique for plasma characterization. The objective of the work was to test the nickel-chrome alloy as probe tip material for characterization of RF discharge plasmas. In order to meet the objective, a triple Langmuir probe diagnostic system and associated driving circuit was designed and tested in inductively coupled plasma (ICP) generated by a 13.56 MHz radio frequency (RF) source. Using this probe diagnostic, the electron temperature, electron number density and ion saturation current were measured as a function of input RF power and filling gas pressure. An increasing trend was noticed in electron temperature and electron number density with input power whilst a decreasing trend was evident in these parameters for increasing nitrogen gas pressure. The overall variations in electron temperature and electron number density after repeated measurements were ranging from 5 to 12 and 3 to 13, respectively. © 2014 World Scientific Publishing Company.