EEDF Determination by Numerical Processing of the Probe Data in Neon DC Discharge

Numerical processing of the data from single probe measurements allows determination of the electron energy distribution function (EEDF) from the second derivative of the probe current. The current‐voltage probe characteristics are measured by acquisition system for further smoothing and differentiation. The developed procedure is a combination of the Savitzky‐Golay (S‐G) smoothing filter and three‐point differentiator with varying step. The above methods are modified for irregularly sampled data which enables more accurate determination of EEDF. Advantages of this approach are data smoothing with minimum information loss and improved noise reduction at the differentiation procedure. The procedure is applied for EEDF calculation in low current low pressure neon discharge. The shape of EEDF shows deviation from both Maxwellian and Druyvesteyn distributions. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)