Continuous heatable Langmuir probe for flowing afterglow measurements

A heatable Langmuir probe consisting of a continuous dc-heating-current loo p of tungsten wire is presented. This technique is efficient to keep the pr obe surface clean for flowing afterglow measurements. In our experimental c onditions, the perturbations on the electron density determination can be c onsidered as very small. The measurement of the well-known rate for the dis sociative recombination of O-2(+) shows that the gas surrounding the probe is not heated for estimated probe temperature up to 700 K. (C) 2000 America n Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(00)01501-X].