Automation of Plasma Diagnostics at Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico

Abstract

This work presents an ongoing effort to develop an automatic measurement system for plasma diagnostics at the Plasma Engineering Laboratory of Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, along with an example of its operation. The system intends to be used with electrostatic probes such as Single and Double Langmuir probes, emissive probe, ion and electron energy analyzers, and others. The automatic measurement system includes automatic positioning of probes inside the plasma chamber, automatic voltage sweep of probes for each position, and automatic analysis of the probe I-V characteristic. Measurement results obtained from this automatic measurement system during a particular experiment are shown and compared with a traditional method, producing satisfactory results.