A reply to a comment on: `On the plasma parameters of a planar inductive oxygen discharge

Abstract

This is a reply to the preceding comment by E N Franklin titled `Is oxygen a detachment-dominated gas or not?' on our earlier work `On the plasma parameters of a planar inductive discharge' (2000 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 33 1323). We show that the density of the metastable oxygen molecule O2(a1Δg) is significant in low pressure high density discharge. Furthermore, we demonstrate that detachment has little influence on the electron density, electron temperature and the overall density of negative ions at these low pressures (1-20 mTorr).