Power balance at cathode in glow discharges

When an electrode is biased negatively (similar to few hundred volts) with respect to a metallic chamber, maintained at a subatmospheric pressure (similar to few millibars), glow discharge plasma is formed around the electrode (cathode). The plasma supplies ions and other species to the cathode, along with other events at the cathode, and its temperature also rises. From the measurement of temporal temperature profile, in the pressure range of 0.5-5 mbars, the thermal influx at the cathode has been determined. Various modes of power input to the cathode are estimated from the discharge parameters. The contribution of ions and neutrals to the total input power is obtained theoretically from respective velocity distributions at the cathode considering charge exchange as the dominant collision mechanism inside the sheath region. The comparison of experimental and theoretical results suggests that in the pressure range being considered, which is typical of glow discharges, the major contribution to the energy input at the cathode comes from energetic neutrals generated by the charge-exchange collision inside the collisional ion sheath. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.