Electron-driven rates in HeXe glow discharges

Abstract

We have performed a series of space-independent, electron Boltzmann calculations for the determination of electron-driven rate coefficients in helium/xenon glows for a variety of He/Xe mixture ratios. The present work was performed in support of research efforts involving plasma display panels. Our Boltzmann calculations do not involve any term-expansions of the electron velocity distribution function (EVDF) and, in principle, incorporate the exact EVDF. Legendre decompositions of our complete EVDFs suggest that the more common two-term approximation methods may be unreliable for the determination of certain rates in gas mixtures. More generally, this data can be used to provide the rate and transport coefficients necessary for fluid simulations involving He/Xe glows under a limited range of discharge conditions. For each mixture ratio considered, polynomial fits to the resulting, steady-state rate coefficients, electron drift velocities and average energies, as functions of E/N are presented. As expected, the data is very sensitive to the mixture ratio of the two gas components.