Spectroscopic studies of microwave discharges in H 2 -Ar-B 2 H 6 gas mixtures (f = 2.45 GHz, P = 1.2-3.5 kW, p = 1-8 mbar) have been performed to improve the possibilities of diagnostics of non-equilibrium, low-pressure plasmas containing boron and hydrogen. For this purpose, UV-VIS optical emission spectroscopy and infrared absorption spectroscopy with tunable diode lasers (TDLAS) have been applied. It is shown that information about neutral species and the gas temperature may be obtained by means of new and modified spectroscopic methods. A method for the determination of the absolute number density of boron atoms from measured relative intensities of the components of the boron resonance doublet (distorted by reabsorption) is proposed and tested for validity. The maximum of the density was found to be 3.8 × 10 11 atoms cm −3 at an admixture of diborane of about 2%. The gas temperature was determined from the intensity distributions in the rotational structure of the emission bands of BH and H 2 and from Doppler broadening of the absorption line profiles of the BH molecule. It was observed that values of the gas temperature obtained from the rotational intensity distributions are in good agreement with those obtained from Doppler widths (T g = 700-1070 K). Based on measurements of the relative line intensities of atomic and molecular hydrogen and the gas temperature, and using a simple excitation-deactivation model, the density of molecular hydrogen was found to be about 40 times higher than the density of atomic hydrogen. It is shown that some absorption lines of boron hydrides (B 2 H 6 , BH 3 and BH) detected by TDLAS may be used for plasma diagnostics.

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The sheath dynamics in the afterglow of a pulsed inductively coupled plasma, operated in hydrogen, is investigated. It is found that the sheath potential does not fully collapse in the early post-discharge. Time resolved measurements of the positive ion flux in a hydrogen plasma, using a mass resolved ion energy analyser, reveal that a constant 2 eV mean ion energy persists for several hundred micro-seconds in the afterglow. The presence of a finite sheath potential is explained by super-elastic collisions between vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules and electrons in the afterglow, leading to an electron temperature of about 0.5 eV. Plasma density decay times measured using both the mass resolved energy analyser and a Langmuir probe are in good agreement. Vibrational temperatures measured using optical emission spectroscopy support the theory of electron heating through super-elastic collisions with vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules. Measurements are also supported by numerical simulations and modelling results.