Two- and three-body attachment, electron transport and ionisation in water-air mixtures

Abstract

Three-body electron attachment in the mixtures of H2O and dry air have been measured over a wide range of the density-reduced electric field, E/N, from 3–130 Td and gas pressures, for mixture combinations ranging from 1% to 50% of H2O. We have measured the regions of three-body attachment (3–30 Td) and two-body dissociative attachment (40–130 Td). Besides, the increasing amount of H2O in the mixture causes an increase in the three-body reaction rates of up to two orders of magnitude in comparison with that measured for dry air. On the other hand, the three-body attachment coefficients exceed the two-body ones (dissociative attachment) at high pressures. Good agreement has been found with previous measurements of H2O-dry air mixtures with H2O concentrations of up to 2%. We know of no previous work for higher H2O concentrations. Values of the effective ionisation coefficients and longitudinal diffusion coefficients derived from the same measurements are also presented.