The Influence of Radiation Trapping on the Metastable Population Density and Applications to Low-pressure Plasma

Emission lines ratios were used for diagnostics of and excited level densities in low-temperature plasmas. In this work, an optical emission spectroscopy (OES) was used to determine the electron temperature and metastable level densities in low-pressure inductively coupled plasma. The emission spectroscopy method was based on a simple collisional-radiative model. The selected lines of the Ar(4p to 4s) were influenced by the radiation trapping at relatively high pressures where the plasma become optically thick. To quantify this effect, a pressure dependence factor ${\alpha}$(P) was derived by using corrections for the measured intensities. It was found that the lower metastable level densities were obtained when ${\alpha}$(P) increased with the increasing discharge pressure. The effect of non-Maxwellian electron energy distribution functions (EEDFs) on the metastables was also presented and discussed.