M. Tichy et al., LANGMUIR PROBE DIAGNOSTICS FOR MEDIUM PRESSURE AND MAGNETIZED LOW-TEMPERATURE PLASMA, Journal de physique. IV, 7(C4), 1997, pp. 397-411
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.