The behavior of argon plasma driven by nanosecond pulsed plasma in a low-pressure plasma reactor is investigated using a global model, and the results are compared with the experimental measurements. The time evolution of plasma density and the electron energy probability function are calculated by solving the energy balance and Boltzmann equations. During and shortly after the discharge pulse, the electron energy probability function can be represented by a bi-Maxwellian distribution, indicating two energy groups of electrons. According to the effective electron temperature calculation, we find that there are more high-energy electrons that play an important role in the excitation and ionization processes than low-energy electrons. The effective electron temperature is also measured via optical emission spectroscopy to evaluate the simulation model. In the comparison, the simulation results are found to be in agreement with the measure- ments. Furthermore, variations of the effective electron temperature are presented versus other discharge parameters, such as pulse width time, pulse rise time and gas pressure.
In this paper, the influence of magnetic field strength on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy （LIBS） has been investigated for various pressures. The plasma plume was produced by employing Q-switch Nd：YAG laser ablation of an A1-Li alloy operating at a 1064 nm wavelength. The results indicated that the LIBS intensity of the A1 and Li emission lines is boosted with an increase of magnetic strength. Typically, the intensity of the A11 and Li I spectral emissions can be magnified by 1.5-3 times in a steady magnetic field of 1.1 T compared with the field-free case. Also, in this investigation we recorded time-resolved images of the laser-produced plume by employing a fast ICCD camera. The results show that the luminance of the plasma is enhanced and the time of persistence is increased significantly, and the plasma plume splits into two lobes in the presence of a magnetic field. The probable reason for the enhancement is the magnetic confinement effect which increases the number density of excited atoms and the population of species in a high energy state. In addition, the electron temperature and density are also augmented by the magnetic field compared to the field-free case.
In this work, a time-of-flight （TOF） mass spectrometer has been used to investigate the distribution of intermediate species and formation process of carbon clusters. The graphite sample was ablated by Nd：YAG laser （532 nm and 1064 nm）. The results indicate that the maximum size distribution shifted towards small cluster ions as the laser fluence increased, which happened because of the fragmentation of larger clusters in the hot plume. The temporal evolution of ions was measured by varying the delay time of the ion extraction pulse with respect to the laser irradiation, which was used to provide distribution information of the species in the ablated plasma plume. When the laser fluence decreased, the yield of all of the clusters obviously dropped.
