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Notes: An expanding thermal arc plasma in argon–hydrogen is investigated by means of emission spectroscopy. The hydrogen can be added to the argon flow before it enters the thermal arc plasma source, or it can be flushed directly into the vacuum expansion vessel (1–20 vol % H2). The atomic state distribution function for hydrogen, measured at a downstream distance of 20 mm, turns out to be very different in the two cases. For injection in the arc, three-particle recombination is a primary source of hydrogen excitation, whereas measurements with hydrogen injected into the vessel clearly point to a molecular channel (dissociative recombination of formed ArH+) populating atomic hydrogen levels. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: A combined Thomson–Rayleigh scattering device is discussed. It consists of a Nd:YAG laser as a light source in combination with a multichannel detection technique consisting of a gated light amplifier in combination with an optical multichannel analyzer. Special attention is focused on the analysis of the measured spectra. Including convolution methods and taking into account weak coherent effects increases the dynamic range and the accuracy of the measured electron density ne and temperature Te and neutral particle density n0. Accuracies of 1%–4% for ne, 2%–6% for Te, and 10%–50% for n0 depending on the plasma condition are obtained. The dynamic range for ne is 7×1017–1021 m−3, for n0 is 1020–1023 m−3 and for Te is 1000–50 000 K.

Notes: A new calibration method to obtain the electron density from Thomson scattering on an inductively coupled plasma is discussed. Raman scattering of nitrogen is used for recovering the Rayleigh scattering signal. This has the advantage that no corrections are necessary for stray light, like with other calibration methods, using the direct measured Rayleigh scattering signal on a well-known gas. It is shown that electron densities and electron temperatures can be measured with an accuracy of about 15% in density and of about 150 K in temperature. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: We report on quantitative, spatially resolved density, temperature, and velocity measurements on ground-state atomic hydrogen in an expanding thermal Ar–H plasma using two-photon excitation laser-induced fluorescence (LIF). The method's diagnostic value for application in this plasma is assessed by identifying and evaluating the possibly disturbing factors on the interpretation of the LIF signal in terms of density, temperature, and velocity. In order to obtain quantitative density numbers, the LIF setup is calibrated for H measurements using two different methods. A commonly applied calibration method, in which the LIF signal from a, by titration, known amount of H generated by a flow-tube reactor is used as a reference, is compared to a rather new calibration method, in which the H density in the plasma jet is derived from a measurement of the two-photon LIF signal generated from krypton at a well-known pressure, using a known Kr to H detection sensitivity ratio. The two methods yield nearly the same result, which validates the new H density calibration. Gauging the new "rare gas method" by the "flow-tube reactor method," we find a krypton to hydrogen two-photon excitation cross section ratio σKr(2)/σH(2) of 0.56, close to the reported value of 0.62. Since the H density calibration via two-photon LIF of krypton is experimentally far more easy than the one using a flow-tube reactor, it is foreseen that the "rare gas method" will become the method of choice in two-photon LIF experiments. The current two-photon LIF detection limit for H in the Ar–H plasma jet is 1015 m−3. The accuracy of the density measurements depends on the accuracy of the calibration, which is currently limited to 33%. The reproducibility depends on the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio in the LIF measurements and is orders of magnitude better. The accuracy in the temperature determination also depends on the S/N ratio of the LIF signal and on the ratio between the Doppler-width of the transition and the linewidth of the excitation laser. Due to the small H mass, the current linewidth of the UV laser radiation is never the accuracy limiting factor in the H temperature determination, even not at room temperature. Quantitative velocity numbers are obtained by measuring the Doppler shift in the H two-photon excitation spectrum. Both the radial and axial velocity components are obtained by applying a perpendicular and an antiparallel excitation configuration, respectively. The required laser frequency calibration is accomplished by simultaneously recording the I2 absorption spectrum with the fundamental frequency component of the laser system. This method, which is well-established in spectroscopic applications, enables us to achieve a relative accuracy in the transition frequency measurement below 10−6, corresponding to an accuracy in the velocity of approximately 200 m/s. This accuracy is nearly laser linewidth limited. © 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: Abstract The effect of introducing molecular compounds into argon plasmas has been studied using an expanding microwave induced plasma at atmospheric pressure. Besides the use of optical emission spectroscopy (OES), also the time dependent behavior of line intensities during power interruptions has been studied. From the measurements it is found that even an injection of small amounts of molecular compounds (〉 0.5%) leads to important changes in excitation mechanisms in the plasma. It is also found that in the recombination zone downstream in the plasma an excitation mechanism which is independent of the electron density, e.g. excitation transfer from metastables or Penning ionization, must be responsible for the excitation of analytes.

Notes: Summary Sequencing of sorghum mitochondrial atp6 cDNA clones revealed 19 C-to-U transcript editing events within a 756 bp-conserved core gene; three were silent and 16 resulted in 15 amino acid changes. Only one edit, which was silent, was found in the 381 bp amino-extension to the core gene. Eleven of the 15 changed amino acids were identical with or else represented conservative changes compared to yeast atp6. Editing of a CAA codon to TAA truncates to carboxy-terminus to a position identical to that of yeast. The frequency of editing at sites which change amino acids was very high in contrast to partial editing at silent, third base, sites.

Notes: Abstract For the evaluation of transport in high density plasmas numerical models have been developed in which simultaneously the conservation laws for mass, momentum and energy are solved. For high density plasmas, which are not too far from equilibrium the commonly used thermodynamic quantities are, electron temperature Te, electron density ne, heavy particle temperature and neutral density (or pressure). In this contribution an alternative formulation is described in which the plasma state is described by electron density ne and total pressure p and two non-equilibrium parameters: the deviation from Saha equilibrium of the neutral ground state (δb1 = n1/n1 saha−1) and the deviation from thermal equilibrium between electrons and heavy particles δΘ = 1−Th/Te. The latter two parameters are zero in local thermodynamic equilibrium. The advantage of this formulation is, that the transport coefficients and radiative properties can be reformulated as function of mainly ne (at constant pressure), as the influences of non zero δb1 and δΘ are small or can be explicitly given. As a result a simpler approximate formulation of the transport problem can be obtained. As an example the procedure is illustrated for atmospheric argon plasmas and for one aspect a comparison is made with work from e.g. E. Pfender.

Notes: Abstract Three sequence blocks of 10–12 bp are conserved in sequence and order 5′ to putative start codons of several higher-plant mitochondrial genes. At least 25 examples were found, primarily associated with coxII, atp6, and orf25, in monocotyledons and dicotyledons. The proximal block can be 9 bp from start codons, and the three blocks generally occur within 100 bp 5′ of start codons. In three examples 5′ termini of the blocks represent recombination breakpoints, resulting in conservation of the blocks in resultant configurations. The two proximal blocks can form a secondary structure motif. The occurrence of the blocks near start codons, and conserved sequence and order, is consistent with a possible role in translation initiation or regulation.

Notes: Abstract Sorghum mitochondrialatp6 occurs as one copy in the line Tx398 and as two copies in IS1112C. In IS1112C a repeated sequence diverged within theatp6 open reading frames. The two open reading frames (1137 bp,atp6-1; 1002 bp,atp6-2) share an identical conserved region of 756 bp but are flanked 5′ by divergent extensions of 246 (atp6-1) or 381 bp (atp6-2). Tx398 carried onlyatp6-2. The breakpoint of the repeated sequence of the conserved core region corresponds to the amino acid sequence Ser-Pro-Leu-Asp, which is the amino terminus of the proteolytically processed yeast ATP6. The 5′ extensions ofatp6-1 andatp6-2 were similar to those of rice and maize, respectively. Each open reading is transcribed, however nuclear background influenced transcriptional patterns ofatp6-2 in IS1112C.

Notes: Abstract Various techniques to measure the electron density and temperature of a 100 MHz inductively coupled plasma (ICP) are compared with each other. Apart from passive spectroscopy of measuring the shape of (e.g. Hβ) and the area under emission lines we explored the field of active spectroscopy. Non-intrusive and specific are the methods of diode laser absorption (DLA) of an argon 4s-4p transition and Thomson scattering (TS). Intrusive and global is the power interruption (PI) technique: the response of line (argon and analytes) and continuum emission is followed during PI. Finally, a combination of two active techniques, namely TS during PI, is studied. By using the different techniques on the same plasma condition (frequency, power and flows) this intercomparison will reveal the validity region of the various techniques. In this way a strong basis will be created for understanding plasma phenomena.