Disappearance and Reappearance of Dust Particles in Cogenerated Dusty Plasma

Abstract

In this unique experiment, where dust is produced in a sub-atmospheric pressure plasma formed between two parallel plate electrodes using a bipolar pulsed dc power supply as the source of power for plasma production, dust disappearance for few seconds is experimented. The plasma forming gas is a mixture of argon and acetylene. The plasma phase chemical reactions help in the formation of sub-micron dust particles that grow in size between two parallel electrodes. Using another single negative pulse, placed in between two electrodes, applied to another electrode, the dust particles can be disappeared for significant duration from the dusty plasma zone. The applied single pulse voltage is varied between 50-250 V. On the application of the pulse, in its initial phase, the dusty plasma gets disturbed and for some duration (~ few seconds) there is no light scattering observed, indicating that the dust is disappeared from the region between the electrodes. Later the plasma formation again reappears and similar structured dusty cloud is formed. The results are important as it gives an idea how to displace some unwanted dusts from our required region to another region.