Excimer emission from microhollow cathode argon discharges

Abstract

Microhollow cathode discharges (MHCDs) operated in rare gases are sources of intense excimer emission. Of particular interest is argon, because of its relatively low cost and the short wavelength (128 nm) of its excimer emission. The measured internal efficiency, obtained in static argon at atmospheric pressure, was found to be on the order of 1%. Flowing argon through a direct current (DC) MHCD at atmospheric pressure caused the argon excimer internal efficiency to increase to 6%, indicating that the low efficiency in static argon is mainly due to impurities. Applying 10 ns pulses to the DC plasma resulted in an increase in excimer power from 30 mW DC to 180 mW peak power, at an efficiency of 5–6%. The increase in excimer power correlates with an increase in the electron density. For DC operation, electron densities of 10¹⁵ cm⁻³ were measured in atmospheric pressure argon micro-plasmas, which increased to values beyond 10¹⁶ cm⁻³ for nanosecond pulsed operation. This increase in electron density and excimer power is due to pulsed electron heating, an effect that has allowed us to raise the mean electron energy from 1 eV, for DC operation, to 2.25 eV in the pulsed mode.