Data Requirements
This section gives an overview of the data to be assembled before attempting to model a plasma.
One of the main difficulties is to find a complete and physically correct chemical mechanism for the plasma of interest. This can involve just a handful of reactions and species (as for argon), or in the case of molecular gases there can be hundreds of reactions and tens of hundreds of species. Often the chemical mechanism can be found from a literature search, but if it is a unique plasma chemistry then the chemical mechanism is likely unknown. The only option is to find a plasma chemistry that exhibits similar properties to your specific application and use that as a reference.
The following sections is a guide for the data need for each of the features which make up a plasma model.
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Electron Impact Reactions
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Reaction
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Surface Reaction
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Species