The effect of small quantities of hydrogen on a glow discharge in neon. Comparison with the argon case

Abstract

In order to gain an insight into the numerous effects caused by the addition of hydrogen to an argon glow discharge, comparison experiments have been made with neon as carrier gas. In some cases the effects are diminished or even disappear. Using various bulk samples, such as copper, steel and titanium, sputtered in a neon glow discharge, the intensities of the analytical lines are affected by the presence of hydrogen in different ways from argon; the dependent parameter (the discharge current in this work) and the sputtering rate vary less than in argon. The crater shape and roughness are also affected and these effects are discussed qualitatively. Probably the most important spectral feature caused by hydrogen in the case of a discharge in argon is the emission of a continuous background. This does not appear in neon under similar discharge conditions and only weakly at high hydrogen concentrations. This supports the suggestion, made in previous work, that an effective quenching process of the argon metastables (11.55 and 11.72 eV) is Penning excitation of the hydrogen molecules, and subsequent decay to a repulsive state with emission of the continuum; in neon the energy match does not occur. It was found with neon, as with argon, that similar features occur as when hydrogen is introduced in different ways into the glow discharge: as a molecular gas contamination or as a constituent of the sample. Glow discharge mass spectrometry (GD-MS) experiments carried out with both argon and neon support the results obtained by optical emission spectrometry (OES) and provide further relevant information.