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Theory and Applications in Thermal and Cold Plasma

NPTEL via Swayam

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Details

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Provider

Swayam
Pricing

Free Online Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Effort

12 weeks
Sessions

Self-Paced
Level

Intermediate

Found in

Plasma Physics Courses

ABOUT THE COURSE:Thermal and non-thermal plasmas are gaining immense importance in recent time due to its wide spread use in numerous industrial applications. While the fundamental physics remains the same, newer plasma devices and novel plasma generation techniques are becoming more and more important to meet the stringent requirements of the challenging application areas. The course offers an in-depth understanding of the device physics, process chemistry and plasma diagnosis that forms a key factor in any successful development. With a crisp theoretical understanding at the beginning, the course deals with device physics and process chemistries in plasma at length. Together with a detail understanding of the plasma generation and thermo-physical properties, most of the important diagnostic techniques of industrial plasmas are covered next. The course ends with a comprehensive understanding of some of the advanced technological applications in recent time.INTENDED AUDIENCE: M.Sc., Ph. D. and Post Doctoral Students and Researchers, Hospital Doctors and Staff and Industry People and Defence PersonnelPREREQUISITES: B.Sc in Physics or B.E/B. Tech in Mechanical/Electrical/Chemical Engineering, The course is a stand-alone course for a thorough understanding of different types of industrial processing plasmas and their wide range of interesting applications.INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Large sector of medium and small-scale industries and the start-ups who uses plasma in their core processes will highly value this course for a thorough training of their personnel on basics. Academic institutions offering advanced courses in the cutting-edge industrial plasma technologies may directly adopt this course in their curriculum. Wide sector of medical research, showing increasing interest in cold plasma applications may get genuinely interested in the course. Increasing application of plasma in defence and space applications may adopt this course for training of their personnel.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to thermal and cold plasmas. Plasma, the fourth state of matter, ionization, recombination, diffusion and mobility in plasma, thermal ionization, Saha ionization equation, plasma species distribution.
Week 2:Plasma collective behavior, charge neutrality, space and time scales, plasma sheath, concept of plasma temperature, Debye length, plasma oscillation frequency, plasma parameter, criteria for plasma state.
Week 3:Collisions in plasma, small and large angle scattering in plasma, collisional and collisionless approximations. Equilibrium and non-equilibrium models, elementary fluid theory of plasmas and MHD equations.
Week 4:Ionization potential of elements, Townsend mechanism, ionization by electron collision: Townsend’s first ionization coefficient, ionization by positive ion collision, photons, cathode processes, penning effect, effect of contaminants, AC and DC break down concepts, Paschen’s law.
Week 5:Partition function hierarchy, thermodynamic and transport properties, Elementary ideas on variation of these properties of common plasma gases with temperature, pressure, thermal and chemical non-equilibrium.
Week 6:Thermal plasma devices: Thirmionic and thermo-chemical cathodes, electrode features, Discharge characteristics, transition from glow to arcs, arc characteristics, arc devices, design features, cathode and anode heat transfer in designing a torch, required power supply features.
Week 7:Diffused and constricted arcs, transferred and non-transferred arcs, arc root movement, inherent arc instabilities, cathode and anode jet formation, electromagnetic pumping, implication of electromagnetic body forces, JxB plasma thrust.
Week 8:RF devices: Principle of RF plasma generation, device design, special features, thermal and flow field, advantages and disadvantages. Cold plasma devices: KHZ, MHz and RF ranges of operation, DBD and CCP direct discharges. Discharge characteristics and distinctive features.
Week 9:Emission Spectroscopy: Emission spectroscopic tools. Plasma equilibrium, CTE, LTE and PLTE concepts of plasma and emission characteristics. Optically thick and thin plasma. Black body radiation, Bremsstrahlung. Principles of level population, Boltzmann distribution. Boltzmann plot technique for determination of plasma temperature, limitations. Determination of electron number density.
Week 10:Plasma process diagnostics: Atomic and ionic emission lines, molecular bands, species identification, plasma particle interactions, tools for temperature, velocity and density distributions of particles in plasma jet, Langmuir probe, principles, limitations.
Week 11:Plasma technology for renewable energy and environment: Plasma pyrolysis, gasification and incineration, waste to energy concept, societal application, plasma cutting and welding. Plasma in medicine: cold plasma application for cancer therapy, synthesis of nano-composites, functionalization, targeted drug delivery.
Week 12:Plasma in agriculture: synthesis of nitrate fertilizer, seed germination, plasma catalysis. Plasma in synthesis of novel materials: Nano-synthesis, top-down and bottom-up approaches, homogeneous nucleation, unimodal and bi-modal size distributions, size control principles, plasma coating.