In this work, charge control of micro-particles from ~ -40 to +10 elementary charges is presented. This is achieved at 0.9 mbar argon in the spatial afterglow of an inductively coupled plasma by solely changing the strength of an externally applied electric field. Crucial in the presented experiments is the use of a grounded mesh grid in the cross section of the setup, separating the active plasma region from the "shielded" spatial afterglow. While in the regions above the mesh grid all particles reached a constant negative equilibrium charge, the actual control achieved in the shielded spatial afterglow can most probably be explained by variations of the local ion density. The achieved charge control not only opens up possibilities to study nano-scale surface charging physics on micro-meter length scales, it also contributes to the further development of plasma-based contamination control for ultra-clean low-pressure systems.

中文翻译：

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屏蔽等离子体余辉中微粒的电荷控制

在这项工作中，提出了从 ~ -40 到 +10 基本电荷的微粒电荷控制。这是在 0.9 mbar 氩气下通过仅改变外部施加的电场强度在感应耦合等离子体的空间余辉中实现的。在所提出的实验中，至关重要的是在设置的横截面中使用接地网状网格，将活动等离子体区域与“屏蔽”空间余辉分开。虽然在网格上方的区域中，所有粒子都达到了恒定的负平衡电荷，但在屏蔽空间余辉中实现的实际控制很可能可以通过局部离子密度的变化来解释。所实现的电荷控制不仅开辟了在微米长度尺度上研究纳米级表面电荷物理学的可能性，