Strongly emissive plasma-facing material under space-charge limited regime: Application to emissive probes

Abstract

A quasi-static theoretical 1D model is developed to describe the sheath structure of a strongly emissive plasma-facing material and is subsequently applied to emissive probes' experimental data—which are usually supposed to be an efficient tool to directly measure plasma potential fluctuations. The model is derived following the space-charge limited emission current model developed in Takamura et al., [Contrib. Plasma Phys. 44(1–3), 126–137 (2004)], adding the contribution of secondary emission due to back-diffusion of plasma electrons at the emitting surface. From this theory, current-voltage characteristics of emissive probes are derived. A theoretical relation between the floating potential of an emissive probe and plasma parameters is obtained and a criterion is derived to determine the threshold between the thermoemission limited current regime and space-charge limited current regime. In the space-charge limited regime, a first order expansion is then applied to the quasi-static relation to study the effect of plasma fluctuations on emissive probe measurements. Both the mean values and the fluctuations of the floating potential of an emissive probe predicted by the model, as well as the potential value at which the transition between emission current regimes occurs, are compared to three sets of experimental data obtained in two different plasma devices.