A minimally invasive electrostatic particle extractor for nanodusty plasmas and its application for the verification of in situ Mie polarimetry

Abstract

We present an electrostatic particle extractor system (EPEX) which extracts particles from a reactive, particle-growing plasma by using the electrostatic force. The system is able to extract eight samples during a single growth cycle without the need to interrupt the plasma process. Using video microscopy, imaging-Mie, and Mie polarimetry we demonstrate the minimal invasiveness of EPEX. The extraction voltage and its duration are optimized to tune the particle density on the sample wafer. Compared to other invasive extraction methods, EPEX is fast and reliable. Using atomic force microscopy the size of the particles can be determined from samples extracted from the nanodusty plasma during one growth cycle and can be compared to the results of simultaneously performed in situ Mie polarimetry for the first time. We show that the extraction process can be divided in three distinct phases and that its physics can be understood in the simple framework of the force balance for a single dust particle. Using this single particle model, we present a new method for determining the particle charge of dust particles in dense dusty plasmas. The determined particle charge of (−9.2 ± 2.8) elementary charges reveals a strong Havnes effect.