Absolute continuum intensity diagnostics of a novel large coaxial gridded hollow cathode argon plasma

This paper reports a novel coaxial gridded hollow discharge during operation at low pressure (20 Pa-80 Pa) in an argon atmosphere. A homogeneous hollow discharge was observed under different conditions, and the excitation mechanism and the discharge parameters for the hollow cathode plasma were examined at length. An optical emission spectrometry (OES) method, with a special focus on absolute continuum intensity method, was employed to measure the plasma parameters. The Langmuir probe measurement (LPM) was used to verify the OES results. Both provided electron density values (ne) in the order of 10(16) m(-3) for different plasma settings. Taken together, the results show that the OES method is an effective approach to diagnosing the similar plasma, especially when the LPM is hardly operated. Published by AIP Publishing.