A comparison of emissive and cold floating probe techniques for electric potential measurements in rf inductive discharge

A cold floating probe method was compared with the emissive floating probe method in terms of a low-pressure radio-frequency inductive discharge.The dependences of difference between the plasma potential and the floating potential on the electron temperature 1-8 eV,plasma density 109-1012 cm 3 and magnetic field 100-650 G were obtained.It was demonstrated that the difference between the potentials that obtained by these two methods can differ significantly from the expected value of 5.2 kTe/e for argon.