In this paper, the hydrogen and hydrogen-methane mixed plasma have been generated inside a 33 cm diameter quartz bell jar with a low power (9 KW) and lower frequency 915 MHz microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition system. The reactor is being used for growing polycrystalline diamond (PCD) over large area (100 mm). The generated plasma is diagnosed by in situ optical emission spectroscopy method with wave length ranging from 200 to 900 nm. The effects of microwave power, chamber pressure and gas concentration on plasma characteristics have been studied in this work. Within the optical range, Balmer H α , H β , C 2 swan band and CH lines have been detected at the wavelengths of 655.95, 485.7, 515.82 and 430.17 nm, respectively. It has been observed that for hydrogen plasma, the amount of transition from hydrogen atom inner shell 3 to 2 (H α) is almost constant with increasing microwave (MW) power (from 2000 to 2800 W) and pressure (from 15 to 30 Torr) initially, after that it increases with further increase of MW power and pressure, whereas, the transition from 4 to 2 (H β) is slowly increased with increasing MW power and pressure. For hydrogen-methane plasma, intensities of C 2 swan band, i.e., the transitions from D 3 g to A 3 μ energy levels, are also increased with the increasing microwave power and reactor pressure. It has been observed that the radicals present in the plasma are affected by variation of different reactor parameters like pressure, MW power, CH 4 concentration, etc.

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In contrast to the earlier experiments conducted in other machines, here, in SST-1 the error field measurement experiment is performed with a filled gas pressure ∼8×10 −4 mbar which helped to create a luminescent toroidal beam of electron path originated due to impact excitation and guided by the toroidal magnetic field. Beam path deviations are observed and recorded from radial and top ports using visible range cameras. Such creation and detection of the electron beam path differs from the earlier works where the gun emitted electron beam deviation in ultrahigh vacuum was detected on a collector-grid/fluorescent screen. In the present experiment, large beam deviations were observed. Later investigation of the experimental set-up reveals existence of a possible source of radial electric field in between the source and the vacuum vessel which are separately grounded. Thus, to understand the observed phenomena, experiments are numerically modeled with deviated TF coil set, PF coil set and the electron source location. A particle tracing code is used to follow the electron path in the magnetic field generated by the coil set of interest. Simulation results suggest that the large deviation corresponds to the E×B drifts and not due to the large field errors. Toroidally averaged field errors of the SST-1 TF coils at toroidal field of B 0 =15 kG are negligibly small ∼B 0 ×10 −6 or less, which should not adversely affect the plasma performance.