Optical Emission Characteristics of Atmospheric-Pressure Nonequilibrium Microwave Discharge and High-Frequency DC Pulse Discharge Plasma Jets

With an aim to understand the mechanism of surface processing by atmospheric-pressure nonequilibrium discharge plasma jets, we measured the vibrational and rotational temperatures in the plasmas by means of optical emission spectroscopy (OES) measurement method. This paper focuses on the OES measurement method using a torch-shaped atmospheric-pressure nonequilibrium discharge plasma jet power supply consisting of a microwave (2.45-GHz) generator and a high-frequency (5.0-10-kHz) dc pulse power supply, using a gas mixture of Ar (8.0 L/min) and N₂ (0.1-0.5 L/min) as the discharge plasma gas, and changing the flow rate of N₂ gas at the input power of 100-150 W. Upon comparing vibrational and rotational temperatures (0.18-0.27 eV) determined from the OES measurement method using two types of atmospheric-pressure nonequilibrium discharge plasma jets, results indicate that the microwave discharge plasma jet has considerably low vibrational and rotational temperatures.