Paper PS-ThP9
A DC-RF Magnetized Plasma Source

Thursday, November 1, 2012, 6:00 pm, Room Central Hall

We report results for a new plasma source which uses a low pressure (~10^-4 Torr) discharge with applied electric and magnetic fields. A dc voltage of 20-100 V is applied between the RF plasma cathode and the anode-chamber. The magnetic field is varied between 50-500 G. Under such conditions this cross-field discharge is shown to sustain an efficient ionization of xenon and argon gases (n_e^max ~ 10¹¹-10¹² cm^-3, T_e~ 1-10 eV). Probe measurements revealed that the magnetized plasma of the DC-RF discharge has a non-Maxwellian EEDF with a depleted high-energy tail. It is also shown that spatial variations of the EEDF are governed by a non-local electron heating and anomalous electron transport across the magnetic field. An important implication of the above results is that the anomalous electron transport may degrade the magnetic filter effect, which supposes to separate “hot” and “cold” groups of plasma electrons.