Role of dissociative recombination in the excitation kinetics of an argon microwave plasma at atmospheric pressure

Abstract

A collisional radiative model was developed in order to investigate the influence of dissociative recombination on the Saha–Boltzmann plasma equilibrium. As the dissociative recombination products are not well known, their relative importance was tested through comparison with the distribution of line intensities obtained in a microwave argon discharge produced at atmospheric pressure by a surface wave. It was found that the main dissociation products are the ground state and the 4s levels, the 5p and upper levels playing a negligible role. Because the higher levels are only weakly affected by dissociative recombination, they remain in partial local thermodynamic equilibrium. Therefore, the excitation temperature determined from these levels adequately describes the electron temperature. The model well reproduces experimental measurements of excitation temperature, rotational temperature, electron density, and absolute populations of the excited levels.