Regenerative Soot-II: Emission of carbon clusters from sooting plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a specially designed magnetic field in a hollow cathode plasma source influences carbon clustering and soot formation, revealing the plasma conditions that promote emission of carbon clusters.

Contribution

It introduces a novel magnetic cusp field configuration that enables controlled study of carbon clustering and soot emission in plasma, highlighting the role of magnetic field modes.

Findings

Distinct soot regions depend on magnetic field modes

Magnetic field tuning affects carbon cluster emission

Plasma discharge characteristics influence soot formation

Abstract

A hollow cathode source with a specially designed cusp magnetic field B whose z component is a function of radius and the azimuth angle, provides clustering environment to the sputtered carbon atoms and ions. The distinctive features of the source are its sooting properties that depend upon the two well-defined regions within the discharge. The cusp field drives both of these regions but in different modes. One region ionizes the source gas, introduces the sputtered carbon from the graphite hollow cathode while the other is the collision dominated gyration motion of the positive carbon ions along the z component of the magnetic field contours. Tunability of plasma discharge characteristics provides the tool to investigate clustering in the sooting plasma