Course Objectives

• Learn about the basics of gas discharges.
• Learn about the fundamentals of industrial plasmas.
• Learn how to use diagnostics to measure density, temperature, and energy of neutrals and charged particles in a plasma.
• Learn how to apply diagnostics to ion beams in order to measure current, current density, energy, energy spread, beam profile, and beam divergence.
• Learn how to measure electric and magnetic fields, and how to use various mass analyzers.
• Know about the applications of several state-of-the-art plasma and ion beam diagnostics in research and industry.

Course Description

Low-temperature plasmas are widely used in research and industry. Plasma diagnostics are process specific, and process improvement requires understanding of the plasmas involved. Plasma diagnostics provide the information needed to analyze and improve the desired processes.

This course reviews the fundamentals of gas discharges and low-temperature plasmas. It presents commonly used plasma diagnostics, such as the use of neutral particle detectors, electric and magnetic probes, microwave interferometry, and optical diagnostics instrumentation to measure density, temperature, and kinetic energy of the plasma particles. In addition, ion-beam diagnostics relevant to the measurement of current density, kinetic energy, energy spread, and mass analysis will be discussed. For each diagnostic technique, the why, what, and how of the measurements will be presented and will be followed by practical examples and applications.

Course Materials

Course Notes