Surface damage by sheath effects and unipolar arcs

Abstract

Unipolar arcing develops if the sheath potential is high enough. A laser-produced plasma of short duration was used to study the onset and development of arcing on a stainless steel surface. The laser-produced plasma with kT e ∼ - 100 eV expands rapidly from the focal spot on the target surface in the normal and in radial directions. After one laser shot the damage on the polished surface was observed with an optical and a scanning electron microscope. Although no external voltage was applied, about 20 000 unipolar arc craters are observable on the stainless steel surface which was exposed to the radially expanding plasma for the short time of a few hundred nanoseconds. The size of the arc craters decreases with increasing distance from the focal spot. The initial cathode spot is 1 μm in diameter and 3–6 μm deep, acting like a hollow cathode. The arcs obviously contribute to the erosion of wall material. The experimental results also show that some of the eroded material is redeposited on stainless steel surfaces in loosely bound form.