Study of Argon and Xenon gas properties on DC-glow discharge plasma

Abstract

With the advances in the plasma technology in several fields as waste management, space technology and medical applications, non-thermal plasmas have become popular. They replace the combustion fuels for stationary hall thrusters and require minimal voltage to sustain longer duration. Generally, non-reactive gases such as Xenon, Argon, Krypton in a pure or mixture form is used to generate plasma, in order to have overall better performance of the system. Hence, the study of these gases and its properties becomes very crucial for further improvement in any kind of application. Xenon has proven to be most efficient in Hall thruster as compared to the other gases, but its limited availability and high cost has led to the idea of replacing it with other gases that are in abundant. As the DC glow discharge is considered to be canonical problem of interest, the paper focuses on modelling and simulation of 1-D and 2-D. DC glow discharge tubes using Argon and Xenon as gases to generate plasma and study its properties. The trend in distribution of electron density, electron temperature and electric potential have shown little variation. However, the magnitude on electron density is slightly higher for Argon relative to Xenon for given operating conditions in 1-D simulation and in the case of 2-D simulation the diffusive nature in lateral direction has shown higher peak value for Xenon.