Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing

Plasma Chemistry

Plasma chemistry is the branch of chemistry that studies chemical processes in low-temperature plasma, including the laws that govern reactions in plasma and the fundamentals of plasma chemical technology. Plasma is artificially produced in plasma at temperatures that range from 103 to 2 × 104 K and pressures that range from 10 to 104 atmospheres. Interaction between the reagents in plasma results in the formation of final, or terminal, products; these products can be removed from the plasma by rapid cooling, or quenching. The basic feature of all plasma chemical processes is that reactive particles are generated in significantly higher concentrations than under ordinary conditions of chemical reactions. The reactive particles that are produced in plasma are capable of effecting new types of chemical reactions; the particles include excited molecules, electrons, atoms, atomic and molecular ions, and free radicals. Indeed, some of these particles can only exist in the plasma state