Surface Catalyzed Reaction Efficiencies in Nitrogen and Oxygen Plasmas from Laser Induced Fluorescence Measurements

Abstract

Recent efforts to advance laser diagnostics in plasma facilities have resulted in the capability to measure gradients of temperature and species in the reacting zone above a high-temperature material. These measurements allow a direct qualitative estimate of the surface-catalyzed reaction efficiency when the sub-millimeter spatial distribution of the reactive species is compared with measurements over reference materials. Measurements of nitrogen atom and oxygen atom distributions are presented for reference materials and silicon carbide for both nitrogen and oxygen plasmas to elucidate the relative efficiencies for homogeneous surface catalyzed recombination.