Spectroscopic Investigation of the Separation of A Glow Discharge in an Argon-neon Mixture

The passage of a steady state electric current in a mixture of binary gases between apair of metal electrodes has been found to result in an enrichment of the minority constituent gas near the cathode and the majority gas in the vicinity of the anode (1–7). The study of the separation of the mixture of binary gases under the influence of a discharge current is important for practical applications in gas lasers and for obtaining very pure gas samples. Although extensive studies have been reported in various gas mixtures it seems relatively few have been made in argonneon^(2,3,5) and these were restricted to either low gas pressures or low discharge currents. In the present contri-bution a preliminary study of the cataphoresis separation is reported in a low proportion of argon in neon using spectro-scopic techniques.