A novel technique was developed to diagnose the electron density and its distribution in the low temperature plasma with emission spectroscopy demarcated by Langmuir probe. Theoretically speaking, for a weakly varying electron tempe rature, the plasma emission intensity could be approximated to depend linearly on the electron density, which can be diagnosed with Langmuir probe. Sine the spa tial distribution of the plasma emission intensity can also be measured, the lin ear dependence of the electron density on the emission intensity can be derived by data processing. In the case of the surface wave plasma source, the linear de pendence of the electron density on the emission intensity was evaluated in the newly-developed technique. The calculated and measured results of the electron density and its spatial distribution were found to be in fairly good agreement. We suggest that the new method be of some technological interest in diagnosis of other low temperature plasma. ©, 2015, Zhenkong Kexue yu Jishu Xuebao/Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. All right reserved.
