film deposition

A time-dependent, spatially one-dimensional fluid-Poisson model has been applied to analyse the impact of small amounts of tetramethylsilane (TMS) on the discharge characteristics of an atmospheric-pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) in argon. Based on an established argon kinetics, it includes a reaction kinetics for TMS, which has been validated by measurements of the ignition voltage at the frequency f = 86.2 kHz for TMS amounts of up to 200 ppm.

The plasma parameters of a large-area dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) in argon-HMDSO mixtures containing up to about 1600 ppm of the monomer are investigated by means of numerical modelling. A time-dependent,
spatially one-dimensional fluid model is applied, taking into account the spatial variation of the discharge plasma between plane-parallel dielectrics covering the electrodes. The dataset contains values of power dissipated in the DBD as well as the space- and period-averaged density and mean energy of the electrons as a function of HMDSO admixture.

The HelixJet (https://www.inptdat.de/helixjet) was applied to simultaneous melting and plasma treatment of polyamide (PA 12) microparticles (diameter 60 µm) used conventionally for 3D printing by laser sintering. This proof-of-principle experiment demonstrated that gaussian thickness profiles of PA 12 can be printed using the HelixJet with a rapid rate of 200 mg/s (peak growth 2 mm/s) and with advantageous material properties. The key element of this novel process is the self-regulated balance between material melting and plasma quenching.