The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 07, 1982
Filed:
Jun. 05, 1980
William L Nighan, Manchester, CT (US);
Robert T Brown, Manchester, CT (US);
United Technologies Corporation, Hartford, CT (US);
Abstract
The onset of electric discharge instability in rare-gas monofluoride lasers pumped by electron beam sustained electric discharges (e.g., KrF*) is delayed by employing a laser gas mixture (such as 0.95 Ar, 0.05 Kr, and 0.005 F.sub.2) which includes a small amount of a halogen compound (NF.sub.3) having a rate coefficient for electron dissociative attachment which is much larger than that for fluorine (such as 0.0005 NF.sub.3). The addition of nitrogen trifluoride to the gas mixture modifies the halogen kinetics in a manner to reduce the effect that consumption of the fluorine fuel has on the growth of secondary electrons, and therefore the occurrence of instability in the discharge. The rare-gas metastable quenching coefficient for the nitrogen trifluoride is sufficiently small (on the order of six times smaller than that of the fluorine) so that the small amount of nitrogen trifluoride utilized to stabilize the discharge exerts little or no influence on the other laser processes.