Influence of a current jump on vacuum arc parameters

Author

Bugaev, Alexey S. ; Gushenets, Vasiliy I. ; Nikolaev, Alexey G. ; Oks, Efim M. ; Yushkov, George Y.

Author_Institution

Inst. of High-Current Electron., Acad. of Sci., Tomsk, Russia

Volume

27

Issue

4

fYear

1999

fDate

8/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

882

Lastpage

887

Abstract

Based on time of flight method, influence of short time vacuum arc current jump on arc plasma parameters were investigated. Superposition of the current pulse of a vacuum arc with a high operating voltage results in the appearance of ions of higher charge state in the discharge plasma and in an increase in the mean ion charge state for most of the cathode materials used in the experiment. The method of a “short-time current jump” can be also used to investigate the parameters of a vacuum arc, in particular to estimate the ion direct velocities in vacuum arc plasmas. Our estimates show that in the presence of a current step the ion velocities are almost identical for all differently charged ions and depend only on the peak current and the ion mass

Keywords

ion mobility; plasma diagnostics; plasma transport processes; time of flight mass spectra; vacuum arcs; arc plasma parameters; charge state distribution; current pulse; current step; discharge plasma; high operating voltage; ion direct velocities; ion mass; peak current; short time vacuum arc current jump; short-time current jump; superposition; time of flight mass spectroscopy; vacuum arc parameters; Cathodes; Control systems; Ion beams; Ion sources; Plasma diagnostics; Plasma materials processing; Plasma properties; Radio control; Vacuum arcs; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/27.782254

Filename

782254