Local measurement of plasma radial uniformity was performed in a dual frequency capacitively coupled argon plasma (DF-CCP) reactor using an optical probe. The optical probe collects the light emission from a small separate volume in plasma, thus enabling to diagnose the plasma uniformity for different experimental parameters. Both the gas pressure and the low- frequency (LF) power have apparent effects on the radial uniformity of argon plasma. With the increase in either pressure or LF power, the emission profiles changed from a bell-shaped to a double-peak distribution. The influence of a fused-silica ring around the electrodes on the plasma uniformity was also studied using the optical probe. Possible reasons that result in nonuniform plasmas in our experiments are discussed.
Optical emission spectroscopy measurements of dual-frequency capacitively coupled CF4 plasmas were carried out. The gas temperature (Tg) was acquired by fitting the optical emission spectra of a CF B-X system in 201~206 nm. The atomic fluorine concentration and the electron temperature (Te) were obtained by trace rare gas optical emission spectroscopy and a modified Boltzmann plot technique, respectively. It was found that the gas temperature was about 620±30 K at 50 mTorr and the atomic fluorine concentration increased while the electron temperature decreased with increasing gas pressure and power of high frequency (60 MHz). With increasing low frequency (2 MHz) power, the electron temperature also increased, but the atomic fluorine concentration was insensitive to this change. The generation and disappearance mecha- nisms of F atoms are discussed.
Near-infrared continuous wave cavity ring-down spectroscopy was applied to mea- sure the OH radicals in dielectric barrier discharge plasmas, which play an important role in combustion systems, atmospheric chemistry and the removal of air pollutants by non-thermal plasmas. The P-branches of OH X2YIi (vI : 2 +-- it 0) bands were used for number density measurements. The OH number density and plasma temperature were determined for different applied voltages, gas pressures and concentrations of both oxygen and water. The temporal evolu- tion of the OH number density was obtained by using the "time window" method, which was used to extract individual ring-down times at different times in a half period of the sine wave applied voltage in dielectric barrier discharge plasmas.