Dusty Plasmas

Electrostatic lofting of dust in a Low-pressure, Nonthermal Plasma

Dusty plasmas are a particular class of ionized gas that contain dust particles that acquire charge, loft, and interact, providing electric field enhancement. These charged dust particles in the plasma can damage spacecraft instrumentation and fabricated semiconductor devices, or build up in fusion reactors. This phenomenon of dust lofting due to incident plasma occurs on the surface of the moon, and causes a haze that Apollo astronauts dubbed “the Lunar Glow.” This project explored electrostatic dust charging and lofting, but the specific investigation is proprietary and unpublished at this time. The project was carried out in the IMPACT lab at LASP (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Plasmas) at the University of Colorado, Boulder as a part of an NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in the summer of 2021.

Lanie gained experience running and maintaining experiments in a vacuum chamber, maintaining and repairing electronics, and building and using plasma diagnostic tools such as Langmuir and emissive probes to measure current, electron density, and the electron energy distribution function.

Above, Lanie demonstrates her experimental setup and procedure to fellow members of the REU cohort. As you can see, she never gives a talk without hand gestures.