CAREER: Fundamental Investigations of Atmospheric-Pressure Glow Discharges

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The objective of this effort is to provide a rigorous understanding of atmospheric-pressure glow discharges (APGD). This new class of plasmas can produce large amounts of active chemical species near room temperature and atmospheric pressure and has potential to revolutionize plasma-based processing technologies. The research activities have the following components: (1) a computationally fast, one-dimensional physical model for prediction of APGD axial structure; (2) a two-dimensional model for investigating bulk flow/plasma dynamics interactions; (3) analysis of the electron energy distribution function using a homogeneous, time-dependent electron Boltzman solver; (4) a bench-scale APGD experiment to assist in model validation and to explore the discharge phenomena, including visual characterization of discharge modes to establish stability boundaries as a function of discharge geometry and operating parameters, and electrical characterization of the discharge; and (5) investigation of a novel APGD-based silicon oxidation process with potential application in ultrathin integrated circuit gate-oxide formation.