Numerical Simulation of Plasma Formation in a Hollow Anode with Metal Plasma Arc Evaporators

We presented the results of numerical simulation of plasma formation in a traditional discharge scheme for vacuum arc plasma-assisted deposition and compares them with experimental measurements. It was found that the average electron temperature is 1.00 eV without arc-activated evaporators. In the case of all plasma sources operating, the average electron temperature can achieve 1.35 eV, while plasma concentration is at the level of 1016–1017 1/m3. In addition, the coefficient of unevenness of plasma concentration is 82% when metal plasma evaporators are not activated, and it decreases to 125% when they are active. A decrease in this coefficient was also observed as the radius decreased due to a reduction in the influence of gas and metal plasma generators. The agreement between the results of computer simulation and experiment provides grounds for using the hydrodynamic representation when solving the problem of reducing the degree of plasma distribution unevenness in large-sized discharge systems in the hollow anode mode (more than 0.1 m3) and optimizing installations for generating gas-metal beam-plasma formations.