AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Vacuum Technology Division Tuesday Sessions
       Session VT-TuP

Paper VT-TuP1
Ion-Cathode Bombardment in a DC Deuterium Glow Discharge for High-Density Deuterium Cluster Formation in Metals

Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 6:30 pm, Room Central Hall

Session: Vacuum Technology Poster (and Student Poster Competition)
Presenter: Erik Ziehm, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Authors: E. Ziehm, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
G.H. Miley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Correspondent: Click to Email
A deuterium glow discharge is modeled to obtain angular and energy distributions of incident ions on the cathode vs plasma conditions. The model uses a DC Discharge module in COMSOL Multiphysics® [1] coupled to a Particle Tracing module while utilizing Townsend coefficients for prominent reactions derived from a Boltzmann Two-Term Approximation. Care is taken to use appropriate ionization and dissociation reaction cross sections for deuterium as these values present isotopic differences. The model is benchmarked by Langmuir probe measurements of the electron energy distribution along the cathode dark space and negative glow regions. This model is then used to determine the effects of ion incident energies and dose on the creation of the high-density clusters of deuterium atoms beneath the cathode surface layer. Temperature Desorption Spectroscopy (TDS) complimented with X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) is employed to determine the clusters’ trapping energies and densities.