Dusty Plasma
A dusty plasma is is a system of particles suspended in a background plasma. Sometimes called a complex plasma, the particles are typically tens of micrometers or smaller and are charged. This results in a variety of fascinating phenomena that can be observed with a simple CCD camera or even the naked eye. Dusty plasmas are found in space (comets, planetary rings), are a concern in fusion plasmas, and are considered an important impurity that must be controlled in plasma processing. Our work uses a variety of types of dust, including fluorescent dust to study dust transport during cloud formation. We do most of this work in the laboratory, but some of it we do in a microgravity environment aboard NASA's "Weightless Wonder."
Images of dusty plasmas are also incredibly beautiful and one of ours even won an art competition.
Latest Photos
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1.Plasma Table
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2.Microgravity setup
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3.Pizeoelectric particle dropper
Dusty Plasma Laboratory
Summary
experiments Ground-based & microgravity flights of DC discharges with silica dust, thermophoresis
Modeling Ongoing project to adapt DC PIC models to handle dust
Our dusty plasma experiments are done with a DC (as opposed to RF) bias and either disc or ring electrodes. The dust in our experiments is either silica or a mixture of silica with a fluorescent powder and we have a background argon plasma. CCD cameras image the dust cloud which is suspended in a region of the plasma where the electrical force is in equilibrium with the gravitational force and other forces. A setup like ours typically leads to a 3D "cone-shape" and we can use a vertical laser line to image a slice of the cloud or a UV lamp to image the entire cloud at once.
To see how dust clouds form in our DPX chamber, check out DustFormation.mov.
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory,
P.O. Box 451
Princeton, New Jersey 08543-0451 U.S.A.
GPS: 100 Stellarator Road, Princeton, NJ
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University.
