In this paper, it is shown that microparticles can be effectively neutralised in the (spatial) plasma afterglow of an inductively coupled plasma. A key element in the reported experiments is the utilisation of a grounded mesh grid separating the plasma bulk and the ‘shielded’ plasma afterglow. Once particles—being injected in and charged by the inductively coupled plasma—had passed this mesh grid, the plasma was switched off while the particles continued to be transported under the influence of both flow and gravity. In the shielded spatial plasma afterglow region, the particle charge was deducted from their acceleration in an externally applied electric field. Our experiments demonstrate that all particles were neutralised independently of the applied electric field magnitude. The achieved neutralisation is of primary importance for the further development of plasma-assisted contamination control strategies as well as for a wide range of other applications, such as colourimetric sensing, differential mobility analysers, and medical applications.

在本文中，表明可以在电感耦合等离子体的（空间）等离子体余辉中有效地中和微粒。报告的实验中的一个关键要素是利用接地网状网格将等离子体块和“屏蔽”等离子体余辉分开。一旦被注入电感耦合等离子体并由其充电的粒子通过了这个网格，等离子体就被关闭，而粒子在流动和重力的影响下继续传输。在屏蔽空间等离子体余辉区域，粒子电荷从它们在外加电场中的加速度中扣除。我们的实验表明，所有粒子都独立于所施加的电场大小而被中和。