On the OES line-ratio technique in argon and argon-containing plasmas

Optical emission spectroscopy is used to investigate capacitively coupled argon and argon–hydrogen–silane plasmas. The argon collisional–radiative model (CRM) used to extract the electron density and temperature from the spectra is presented. The electron energy distribution function, which is an input parameter to the model, is discussed in detail. Its strong variation with pressure is found to significantly influence the results for the (effective) temperature. For the analysis of the spectra the common line-ratio technique is applied. Special attention is paid to the choice of lines and a pair of line-ratios for optimum accuracy is suggested. For the argon gas mixture at high partial pressure of the admixed molecular gases the CRM reduces to a corona-like model, extended by a quenching term. The line-ratio method is found to fail under these conditions due to the strong depopulation of the argon 1s states. As a consequence, individual line intensities have to be used and an absolute calibration is required. An easy calibration method, which relies on the results obtained by the line-ratio method in pure argon, is proposed and applied.