Application of a glass-sealed Langmuir probe to ionosphere study

Abstract

A glass-sealed Langmuir probe was developed to get accurate information on the ionospheric plasma. An electrode sealed in a glass tube is first baked in low pressure and tipped off the pumping system to keep the electrode surface clean. An essential advantage of the glass-sealed Langmuir probe is that it will not require the rapid sweeping of a probe voltage for reliable data acquisition. It is noted that the glass-sealed Langmuir probe is strongly recommended for the measurement of energy distribution of thermal electrons by the second harmonic method.