Measurement of sheath thickness at a floating potential

Abstract

In a cylindrical Langmuir probe measurement, ion current is collected from the surface of the sheath surrounded at probe tip, not at the surface of the probe tip. By using this, the sheath thickness can be obtained, if we know some unknown parameters, such as ion current, plasma density, and electron temperature. In this paper, we present a method to measure sheath thickness by using a wave cutoff method and a floating harmonic method. The measured result is in a good agreement with Allen-Boyd-Reynolds theory.