Post-discharge in pure nitrogen containing vapours of zinc

The post-discharge of pure nitrogen is a subject of many studies during many years. The influence of various impurities and traces on the post-discharge kinetics was studied extensively mainly during the last few years. Besides impurities containing oxygen and carbon, observation of mercury atoms influence was observed. The presented work shows the first results obtained in the pure nitrogen containing zinc. The emission of zinc atomic lines was observed not only in an active discharge (as it is applied in GD-OES analytical technique) but some of lines were also well visible during the afterglow up to 60 ms that was a limit for the study. The kinetic model shows that the upper states of these lines are populated by energy transfer from the vibrationally excited nitrogen ground state and metastable N₂ (A ³S_u ⁺) molecules.