Measurement of electron density of atmospheric pressure Ar plasma jet by using Michelson interferometer

Currently, as Plasma application is expanded to the industrial and medical industrial, low temperature plasma applications became important. Especially in medical and biology, many researchers have studied about generated radical species in atmospheric pressure low temperature plasma directly adapted to human body. Therefore, so measurement their plasma parameter is very important work and is widely studied all around world. One of the plasma parameters is electron density and it is closely relative to radical production through the plasma source. some kinds of method to measuring the electron density are Thomson scattering spectroscopy and Millimeter-wave transmission measurement. But most methods have very expensive cost and complex configuration to composed of experiment system. We selected Michelson interferometer system which is very cheap and simple to setting up, so we tried to measuring electron density by laser interferometer with laser beam chopping module for measurement of temporal phase difference in plasma jet. To measuring electron density at atmospheric pressure Ar plasma jet, we obtained the temporal phase shift signal of interferometer. Phase difference of interferometer can occur because of change by refractive index of electron density in plasma jet. The electron density was able to estimate with this phase difference values by using physical formula about refractive index change of external electromagnetic wave in plasma. Our guiding laser used Helium-Neon laser of the centered wavelength of 632 nm. We installed chopper module which can make a 4kHz pulse laser signal at the laser front side. In this experiment, we obtained more exact synchronized phase difference between with and without plasma jet than reported data at last year. Especially, we found the phase difference between time range of discharge current. Electron density is changed from Townsend discharge's electron bombardment, so we observed the phase difference phenomenon and calculated the temporal electron density by using phase shift. In our result, we suggest that the electron density have approximately range between 1014~ 1015 cm-3 in atmospheric pressure Ar plasma jet.