Analysis of the chemical network in a volume-production high-current negative hydrogen ion source

Abstract

Complex simulations (e.g. multi-dimensional fluid models) usually prevent the use of very large chemistry models. In this work, the important physicochemical processes in a volume-production high-current negative hydrogen ion source (HCNHIS) are identified for a pressure range of 1–100 Torr using a global model. The particle species include H2(υ = 0–14), H(n = 1–3), , , H+, H−, and electrons. The simulation results indicate that for the production of negative hydrogen ions through dissociative attachments, the high vibrational levels of hydrogen molecules are important at low pressures, and the ground state and low vibrational levels of hydrogen molecules play an increasingly important role with increasing pressure. The reactions involving the ground state, low vibrational levels, and neighboring levels of each level tend to dominate the production of vibrational levels and transitions between them in the volume-production HCNHIS. With increasing pressure, the electron energy dissipation shifts from dissociation of H2(υ = 0) and electron excitation of H2(υ = 0) through an indirect mechanism followed by radiative decay (the EV process) to electron excitation of H2(υ = 0) through a resonant mechanism (the eV process). A valuable subset of reactions provided by the simplified model is proposed in the investigated pressure range, which could be incorporated in more complex simulations. The results obtained with the simplified model under different simulation conditions are within an acceptable error margin of the results for the full model, which indicates that the robustness of the simplified model of chemical reactions is guaranteed to some extent.