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The 3D dust distribution in dense dust clouds confined in argon rf plasmas is measured by a computed tomography (CT) technique based on the extinction of visible light. On the one hand, clouds of micron-sized particles were created by injecting standardized plastic particles into the plasma. On the other hand, sub-micron sized dust with well-defined properties is grown in situ in an argon acetylene mixture. Once created, both kinds of dust clouds decay in the course of minutes to hours. This decay is monitored by CT measurements. It is revealed that micro-dust clouds feature a drastic change of the dust distribution due to a size reduction of the dust. Dust clouds of sub-micron particles, in contrast, show a strong variation of the overall dust density while the relative dust distribution remains nearly unchanged. The evolution of the overall dust density is subject to two effects: the loss of particles due to an imperfect confinement and the reduction of the dust size via etching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of nanometer-sized particles in a reactive argon-acetylene plasma is investigated by means of kinetic single-wavelength Mie ellipsometry from the change of the polarization state of scattered light. This requires advanced measurement techniques as well as complex methods for the analysis of the measured data. Today commercial devices reduce the metrological effort, but the data analysis is still a challenging topic. We present a scheme to gain time-resolved information about the size evolution of monodisperse spherical particles and to determine their optical properties, represented by the complex refractive index N, without limiting assumptions concerning the evolution of the particle size or the need for additional ex situ diagnostics. The method is applied on typical particle growth processes at varying optical depth and compared to ex situ SEM measurements. It is shown that more complex processes, including particle etching, can be analyzed. This demonstrates the applicability of the analysis on a strongly non-linear process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]