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Low-cost sensors and circuits for plasma education: characterizing power and illuminance

Alessandro N. Vargas, Victor Miller, Ali Mesbah, Gabriele Neretti

TL;DR

This work tackles the challenge of high costs in plasma education by designing a complete, low-cost sensing and processing pipeline to measure plasma power and brightness. It integrates a low-cost HV probe, a shunt-based current probe, and an LDR-based illuminance sensor, all read by an Arduino platform to compute $p(t)=v(t)i(t)$ and map brightness to illuminance through calibrated nonlinear relations. The approach achieves results in close agreement with industrial instruments (differences < ~2%), demonstrates a practical method to estimate plasma power from luminescence, and provides open-source data, code, and BOM. The work has practical impact by enabling affordable hands-on plasma education and potentially expanding access to plasma experiments in under-resourced laboratories.

Abstract

Industrial applications of plasma have significantly increased beyond semiconductor manufacturing in recent years. This necessitates training a skilled workforce in plasma science and technology. However, an essential challenge to this end stems from the high cost of plasma devices and diagnostics. The limited access to plasma devices has hindered plasma education, particularly in the least developed countries. To this end, this paper demonstrates how low-cost sensors and circuits can be developed to enable inexpensive plasma experiments in laboratory environments. In particular, we show how to measure high voltage, current, and power from a cold-atmospheric plasma discharge. Additionally, we develop a low-cost illuminance sensor and demonstrate how it can be used to estimate the corresponding plasma power. The low-cost sensors and electronics presented in this paper can aid educators in characterizing plasma power versus plasma illuminance.

Low-cost sensors and circuits for plasma education: characterizing power and illuminance

TL;DR

This work tackles the challenge of high costs in plasma education by designing a complete, low-cost sensing and processing pipeline to measure plasma power and brightness. It integrates a low-cost HV probe, a shunt-based current probe, and an LDR-based illuminance sensor, all read by an Arduino platform to compute and map brightness to illuminance through calibrated nonlinear relations. The approach achieves results in close agreement with industrial instruments (differences < ~2%), demonstrates a practical method to estimate plasma power from luminescence, and provides open-source data, code, and BOM. The work has practical impact by enabling affordable hands-on plasma education and potentially expanding access to plasma experiments in under-resourced laboratories.

Abstract

Industrial applications of plasma have significantly increased beyond semiconductor manufacturing in recent years. This necessitates training a skilled workforce in plasma science and technology. However, an essential challenge to this end stems from the high cost of plasma devices and diagnostics. The limited access to plasma devices has hindered plasma education, particularly in the least developed countries. To this end, this paper demonstrates how low-cost sensors and circuits can be developed to enable inexpensive plasma experiments in laboratory environments. In particular, we show how to measure high voltage, current, and power from a cold-atmospheric plasma discharge. Additionally, we develop a low-cost illuminance sensor and demonstrate how it can be used to estimate the corresponding plasma power. The low-cost sensors and electronics presented in this paper can aid educators in characterizing plasma power versus plasma illuminance.
Paper Structure (12 sections, 12 equations, 12 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 12 sections, 12 equations, 12 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Experimental setup
  3. Low-cost sensors and circuits
  4. Low-cost sensor for plasma brightness
  5. High-voltage probe and current probe for measuring plasma power
  6. Low-cost high-voltage probe
  7. Low-cost current probe
  8. Light-dependent resistor
  9. Calibration of a light-dependent resistor
  10. Measuring plasma power
  11. Experiments: characterizing plasma power versus illuminance
  12. Concluding remarks

Figures (12)

  • Figure 1: Setup of the plasma experiment. A high-voltage power supply provides direct current (DC) to the circuit. Plasma is ignited between a needle and a lower plate when the voltage $u(t)$ exceeds a certain threshold. A light sensor is conveniently placed to measure plasma brightness. A shunt resistor is used to help measure the current $i(t)$.
  • Figure 2: Schematics of the high-voltage probe. When high-voltage input is applied in $+V_i$, a low voltage appears in the output terminal $+V_o$. A series of RC filters treats the corresponding signal and defines the attenuation $V_o/V_i$. The value of the components $C_0,\ldots,C_n$ and $R_0,\ldots,R_n$ varies according to the project specification.
  • Figure 3: Low-cost high-voltage probe.
  • Figure 4: Configuration of the shunt resistor. This scheme allows us to measure the current that flows through the plasma discharge.
  • Figure 5: Auxiliary circuit for the current sensor. Upper circuit: buffer for the signal $v_S$ from a shunt resistor. Lower circuit: DC offset reference fixed at $1.25$V.
  • ...and 7 more figures

Theorems & Definitions (2)

  • Remark 1
  • Remark 2