This article is cited in 27 papers

The effect of cathode deuteration on the parameters of vacuum-arc plasma

D. L. Shmelev^a, S. A. Barengol'ts^bc, N. N. Shchitov<sup>d

a</sup> Institute of Electrophysics, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ekaterinburg
^b Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
^c P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
^d All-Russia Research Institute of Automatics named after N L Dukhov, Moscow

Abstract: We propose a model for determining the influence of the relative content of deuterium in a zirconium cathode on the properties of vacuum-arc plasma. It is shown that the occlusion of deuterium in the cathode leads to an additional energy consumption for its ionization and to the related decrease in the average charge of cathode material ions in the discharge plasma. Deuterium in the cathode spot is fully ionized, and the drift velocity of deuterium ions almost coincides with that of ions of the cathode material.

Received: 21.04.2014

 English version: Technical Physics Letters, 2014, 40:9, 783–786

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