Determination of the Electron Temperature of Atmospheric Pressure Argon Plasmas by Absolute Line Intensities and a Collisional Radiative Model

The electron temperature in atmospheric argon plasmas created by a DBD jet is determined using a combination of Absolute Line Intensity (ALI) measurements and a collisional radiative model (CRM). The ALI measurements have been performed to determine the densities of the states in the 4p level. In addition, the ground state density is taken into account, which is found via the pressure and the gas temperature. The density ratio of the ground state and 4p state gives a value of the excitation temperature, which by means of the CRM is transformed into the electron temperature. With this method, the electron temperature in the active zone of a pure argon plasma is found to be 1.27 eV which is significantly higher than the experimental value reported by others. An error analysis shows that the relative error in the electron temperature obtained in this way is about 5%. In the afterglow, the temperature decreases gradually to about 0.88 eV. The addition of 2% O-2 leads to a decrease in electron temperature of about 5%.