Complex (Dusty) Plasmas History

The field of complex plasma research evolved from the investigation of dusty plasmas. Early works dealt with the interaction of dust particles with plasmas in space. Dusty plasmas appear in space in interstellar molecular clouds, in proto-planetary disks, and - in our solar system - in cometary tails and planetary rings. Space probes, such as VOYAGER and GIOTTO, influenced this work at the beginning in the 70ies and 80ies of the 20th century. (See Pictures of dust in space.)

In 1986 H. Ikezi published a theoretical work on Coulomb crystallization in a dusty plasma.

While astrophysicists fell in love with dusty plasmas, the micro-chip industry tried to avoid dust grains inside their processing chambers with all means. In the mid-80ies of the 20th century several plasma processes were introduced in the progress of creating smaller and smaller devices on integrated circuit chips. Each single dust grain falling on the surface of a micro-chip during manufacturing will destroy it and therefore raise production costs. The scientists in industry assumed that the dust they found on the chips came from outside the hermetically sealed process chambers and they improved the technique of their clean rooms further and further (and spent more and more money on that). Nevertheless, they found almost the same amount of dust in their chambers.

Gary Selwyn of IBM solved the riddle, when pointing a laser device into a processing chamber during plasma etching. He discovered a cloud of dust floating inside the chamber (Pictures). The dust particles even grew with time from nanometer to micron-size. This means that the dust did not come from the outside but rather was a product of the plasma etching itself. The effort to prevent this dust production also gave a boost to the growing research on dusty plasmas.

History of the investigation of complex plasmas at the MPE Garching:

1989:	Participation at the Dusty Plasma Workshop, Capri (Italy)
1991:	Columbus precursor flight proposal 'Plasma Crystal' to ESA
1992:	Begin of laboratory works at MPE, Garching, and at DLR, Cologne
1993:	First plasma crystals with new particles from Pallas Meetings at Iowa, Dayton, Boulder, Boston Bonas workshop ICPIG Bochum, Talk by Gregor Morfill
1994:	January: Submission of Plasma Crystal Paper August: Publication in 'Physical Review Letters' August: Publication in 'Nature' (Sir John Maddox) Application for 'plasma crystals in microgravity' to DARA (DLR) September: Acceptance of application, unfortunately sent to IPP Begin working on a Space Shuttle GAS (Get Away Special) experiment
1996:	Summer: First parabolic flights on a Cessna (Amsterdam) Citation and PhD of Hubertus Thomas November: TEXUS 35 rocket campaign in Kiruna, Sweden
1997:	Summer: Second parabolic flight campaign in Amsterdam
1998:	February: TEXUS 36 rocket campaign

The story continues! (See PKE History!)


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More on the scientific background of plasma crystals...

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Updated: 2004-11-05
Contact: Michael Kretschmer