| AVS 65th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Plasma Science and Technology Division | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session PS+EM+NS+SS-TuA |
| Session: | Plasma Processing of Challenging Materials - II |
| Presenter: | Bocong Zheng, Michigan State University |
| Authors: | B.C. Zheng, Michigan State University M. Shrestha, Michigan State University K.L. Wang, Michigan State University T. Schuelke, Michigan State University Q.H. Fan, Michigan State University |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Contact glow discharge electrolysis is becoming attractive for nanomaterials manufacturing and surface engineering. In this discharge electrolysis, an electrode is submerged in a liquid electrolyte and a plasma is formed in a vapor layer around the electrode. The process combines the characteristics of electrolysis and plasma discharges, creating high-energy-density plasmas that lead to intensive physical processes and chemical reactions on the working electrode. The authors have found that the physical processes and the chemical reactions could be decoupled under certain conditions. In that case, a textured electrode surface could be created through a chemical-reaction-dominated process instead of an irregular porous surface produced by the physical-reaction-dominated interactions. The mechanisms are not clearly understood yet. This study aims to elucidate the plasma characteristics and the chemical reactions in contact glow plasma electrolysis. A plasma fluid model is established to predict the discharge process with constraint conditions obtained from the experiments. The modeling reveals that the plasma is highly electronegative, and the dominant neutral species are H2 and O2 dissociated from water vapor. The formation of textured surface is attributed to the anisotropic chemical etching by the reactive species generated in the plasmas.