Electrical characteristics of arc-free high-power pulsed sputtering glow plasma

The plasma source has features as follows: (1) the plasma generation unit is small with a volume of 60 × 60 × 60 mm3, (2) a power density is on the order of a few kW/cm2 for a gap length of 10 mm. For a power-supply voltage of − 1.6 kV and an argon pressure of 2.0 Pa, a plasma current is approximately 57 A at a current limiting resistance of 20 Ω. The current density is approximately 2.4 A/cm2. The instantaneous peak power is approximately 25 kW, which corresponds to a power density of approximately 1 kW/cm2. The energy consumed in the plasma per shot is approximately 0.65 J, which results in an average power of approximately 410 W at a repetition rate of 625 Hz. The plasma density is estimated to be on the order of 1013 cm− 3.