Numerical solutions to floating plasma potentials for walls emitting secondary elec- trons are obtained for various surface materials. The calculations are made with plasma moment equations and the secondary electron ...Numerical solutions to floating plasma potentials for walls emitting secondary elec- trons are obtained for various surface materials. The calculations are made with plasma moment equations and the secondary electron emission coefficients, which were determined from recent laboratory experiments. The results estimate the wall potentials up to the physical conditions that allow stable plasma sheaths under the space-charge-limited condition. The materials often used in the laboratory, such as aluminum, silicon, boron, molybdenum, silicon dioxide, and alumina, are considered. The minimum wall potential before the onset of space-charge-limited emission is determined by the electron temperatures at which the effective secondary electron emission coefficient integrated over the velocity distributions is about 0.62. The corresponding potential is given by -eφ0 ,- 1.87kBT. The condition for space-charge-limited emission is newly found by numerically searching for all the stable sheaths. The new condition is -eφ0 - 0.95kBT, and this predicts a wall potential that is less negative than the previously found one. Calculation of the power dissipated to the wall for hydrogen plasmas shows that there is a large difference in terms of power dissipation among the considered materials in the temperature range 20-50 eV.展开更多
基金supported partially by the National Space Lab(No.2009-0091569)BK21+ program through the National Research Foundation(NRF)funded by the Ministry of Education of Korea
文摘Numerical solutions to floating plasma potentials for walls emitting secondary elec- trons are obtained for various surface materials. The calculations are made with plasma moment equations and the secondary electron emission coefficients, which were determined from recent laboratory experiments. The results estimate the wall potentials up to the physical conditions that allow stable plasma sheaths under the space-charge-limited condition. The materials often used in the laboratory, such as aluminum, silicon, boron, molybdenum, silicon dioxide, and alumina, are considered. The minimum wall potential before the onset of space-charge-limited emission is determined by the electron temperatures at which the effective secondary electron emission coefficient integrated over the velocity distributions is about 0.62. The corresponding potential is given by -eφ0 ,- 1.87kBT. The condition for space-charge-limited emission is newly found by numerically searching for all the stable sheaths. The new condition is -eφ0 - 0.95kBT, and this predicts a wall potential that is less negative than the previously found one. Calculation of the power dissipated to the wall for hydrogen plasmas shows that there is a large difference in terms of power dissipation among the considered materials in the temperature range 20-50 eV.
