A Novel Approach for Exploring Nitrogen Behavior in Plasma: Combination of Optical Emission Spectra and Collisional–Radiative Modeling of Nitrogen Molecule

ABSTRACT An approach for connecting optical emission spectra (OES), collisional–radiative (C–R) model, and plasma reaction kinetics simulation is established to understand the plasma chemistry in atmospheric air DBD plasma. The correlation between the reduced electric field ( E/N ) and the vibrational distribution of N 2 ( C 3 Π) is established with C–R model. The E/N is then inferred from OES of the N 2 second positive system, and the electron energy distribution (EEDF) is estimated accordingly to enable plasma reaction kinetics simulation. The results show that the agreement between measured OES and C–R model prediction is better than that in Boltzmann fitting. The plasma kinetic simulation based on the derived EEDF also yields a nice agreement for experiment and simulation in trend of NO x concentration.