Study of the thermal plasma etching at atmospheric pressure on silica rods

The thermal plasma etching (TPE) at atmospheric pressure on silica rods was studied. The plasma to rod heat transfer was simulated using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code Fluent©. An enthalpy probe has been employed to monitor the plasma conditions before the thermal plasma etching process. The heat transfer between the fluid and the silica walls accounts for the energy loss due to surface radiation and vaporization.