Model of a short vacuum arc maintenance

A model of plasma plume generation in a short vacuum arc (SVA) was proposed. The plasma plume extracted from SVA is generated by a common cathode and anode spot plasmas. A calculating model was developed taking into account the atom ionization and the phenomena in the non-equilibrium layers near evaporated surface in the cathode and anode regions. The plasma parameters were studied and found relatively large anode erosion rate and force at the anode surface in SVA in comparison to the force that usually occurs at the cathode in arcs with large gap. This important result was proposed to taken in account using SVA as microplasma source for different applications.