A comparison of emissive and cold floating probe techniques for electric potential measurements in rf inductive discharge

Abstract

A cold floating probe method was compared with the emissive floating probe method in terms of a low-pressure radio-frequency inductive discharge. The dependences of difference between the plasma potential and the floating potential on the electron temperature 1–8 eV, plasma density 109–1012 cm−3 and magnetic field 100–650 G were obtained. It was demonstrated that the difference between the potentials that obtained by these two methods can differ significantly from the expected value of 5.2 kTe/e for argon.