Role of dust and ionization on gradient driven instability in a cross-field plasma

Authors

• Dimple Sharma ¹
• Munish Munish * ²
• Rajat Dhawan ³
• Ravinder Kumar ⁴

1. Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management Nagpur, Maharashtra, India.
2. Department of Physics, Gargi College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
3. Department of Physics, MM Engineering College, Maharishi Markandeshwar, Mullana-Ambala, Haryana, India.
4. Department of Physics, Janta Vedic College Baraut, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Abstract

Presence of dust in cross-field plasma systems such as Hall thrusters or in plasma processing units changes the whole physical phenomenon. Owing to the density gradient, pressure gradient and spatial variation of the magnetic field, the plasma in these devices is often found to be unstable and hence, instability evolves in these systems. Considering dust contamination and ionization in the plasma, we make theoretical study on the growth rate of the instability under the effect of dust density, dust mass and dust charge in addition to the effect of ion temperature, ion temperature gradient, scale length of density inhomogeneity and profile of the ion velocity. For their effective use, the said plasma systems need to be instability free, and the model developed in the present article will help experimentalists to optimize the plasma parameters, external magnetic field and biasing voltage.

Keywords

• Dust contamination
• Film deposition
• Perturbed potential
• Plasma etching
• Plasma processing
• Thruster plasmas
• Growth rate
• Cross-field plasma