USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

David R Boris

Scott G Walton

Richard F Fernsler

David D Blackwell

David N Walker

Tzvetelina Petrova

Eric D Gillman

Methods and apparatuses for the production of HF in an electron-beam generated plasma. A gas containing fluorine, hydrogen, and an inert gas such as argon, e.g., Ar/SF/HO or Ar/SF/NHflows into a plasma treatment chamber to produce a low pressure gas in the chamber. An electron beam directed into the gas forms a plasma from the gas, with energy from the electron beam dissociating the F-containing molecules, which react with H-containing gas to produce HF in the plasma. Although the concentration of the gas phase HF in the plasma is a very small fraction of the total gas in the chamber, due to its highly reactive nature, the low concentration of HF produced by the method of the present invention is enough to modify the surfaces of materials, performing the same function as aqueous HF solutions to remove oxygen from an exposed material.

Plasma-based process for production of F and HF from benign precursors and use of the same in room-temperature plasma processing

An apparatus and methods to increase and direct the spatial volume of atmospheric pressure plasma jets. One or more additional gas flows is introduced to intersect the plasma jet. As the plasma jet interacts with these additional gas flows, the direction of propagation of the plasma jet is altered, the plasma expands into the volume defined by the additional gas flow, and the volume and effective surface area of the plasma jet increases accordingly, while the power increase needed to drive the increase in plasma volume scales sub-linearly with the increase in volume.

Apparatus and method for augmenting the volume of atmospheric pressure plasma jets

An apparatus and method for determining plasma parameters such as plasma electron density n. The probe apparatus includes an LC resonance probe comprising an inductive element and a capacitive element connected in series. The capacitive element of the probe can be in the form of a parallel plate capacitor, a cylindrical capacitor, a spherical capacitor, or any other suitable capacitor. The configuration of the probe apparatus gives it a characteristic resonance frequency &#x3c9;which can be determined by a circuit analysis device. When the capacitive element of the probe apparatus is placed in a plasma, the probe exhibits a new resonance frequency &#x3c9;, which is different from &#x3c9;because of the dielectric constant &#x2208; of the plasma. The difference in resonance frequencies can be used to determine plasma density n, where 

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Silver Spring, MD, United States of America

David R Boris