An investigation of electrophysical and thermophysical characteristics of low-frequency low-pressure inductive discharge of transformation type

The electrophysical and thermophysical characteristics of the low-frequency transformation-type induction discharge in argon in a wide parameter range (the discharge current density varies from $0.1$ to $0.8$ A/cm$^2$ and the argon pressure is $15$–$6000$ Pa) are studied. A self-consistent radial model of plasma of the low-frequency low-pressure transformation-type induction discharge in argon, which is based on the simultaneous solution of balance equations for the electron density and metastable argon atom density and balance equations for electron energy and gas temperature, is designed. The dependencies of the electric field strength on the argon pressure and discharge current are calculated. It is shown that the numerical results are in good agreement with the measurement results and describe their basic features, namely, the falling current-voltage discharge characteristic and the availability of the local minimum in the dependence of the electric field strength on the pressure. The radial distributions of the plasma parameters of the low-frequency induction transformation-type discharge (electron density, gas temperature, and electron temperature) are obtained. It is shown that the gas heating-up accounting leads to a substantial change in the plasma parameters of the inductively coupled discharge.