Measurement of electron density of atmospheric pressure Ne plasma jet by laser heterodyne Interferometer with voltage

Currently, As Plasma application is expanded to the industrial and medical industrial, Low temperature plasma characteristics became important. Especially in Medical industrial, Low temperature plasma directly adapted to human skin, so their plasma parameter is important. One of the plasma parameters is electron density, some kinds of method to measuring electron density are Thomson scattering spectroscopy and Millimeter-wave transmission measurement. But most methods is expensive to composed of experiment system. Heterodyne interferometer system is cheap and simple to setting up, So we tried to measuring electron density by Laser heterodyne interferometer. To measuring electron density at atmospheric pressure, we need to obtain the phase shift signal. And we use a heterodyne interferometer. Our guiding laser is Helium-Neon laser which generated 632 nm laser. We set up to chopper which can make a laser signal like a pulse. Chopper can make a 4 kHz chopping. We used Needle jet as Ne plasma sources. Interference pattern is changed by refractive index of electron density. As this refractive index change, phase shift was occurred. Electron density is changed from Townsend discharge's electron bombardment, so we observed phenomena and calculated phase shift. Finally, we measured electron density by refractive index and electron density relationship. The calculated electron density value is approximately 1015~1016 cm-3. And we studied electron density value with voltage.