LANGMUIR PROBE DIAGNOSTICS FOR MEDIUM PRESSURE AND MAGNETIZED LOW-TEMPERATURE PLASMA

In this contribution we aim at presenting the overview of the work tha t has been done in expanding the applicability of the probe method to low-temperature plasma at the pressure range when the collisions of ch arged particles with neutrals start to be important (we call this pres sure range medium pressures) and to plasma under the influence of the weak-to-medium magnetic field that is commonly used in plasma enhanced technologies. Most of the discussion is devoted to simple case of a p lasma consisting of electrons and of one kind of positive ions. Our re view also mostly concerns the cylindrical Langmuir probe, The first pa rt of the article is devoted to discussion on the influence of the pos itive-ion-neutral collisions on the interpretation of the ion current part of the probe characteristic in order to get the true value of the plasma number density. In the second part one of the theories that ta ke account of this effect is used to assess the influence of the weak magnetic field to the interpretation of the probe data. Finally we dis cuss the anisotropy of the electron velocity distribution function due to the effect of the magnetic field. The discussion is supported by t he new experimental data.