Plasma-induced surface cooling

Plasmas are an indispensable materials engineering tool due to their unique ability to deliver a flux of species and energy to a surface. This energy flux serves to heat the surface out of thermal equilibrium with bulk material, thus enabling local physicochemical processes that can be harnessed for material manipulation. However, to-date, there have been no reports on the direct measurement of the localized, transient thermal response of a material surface exposed to a plasma. Here, we use time-resolved optical thermometry in-situ to show that the energy flux from a pulsed plasma serves to both heat and transiently cool the material surface. To identify potential mechanisms for this ‘plasma cooling,’ we employ time-resolved plasma diagnostics to correlate the photon and charged particle flux with the thermal response of the material. The results indicate photon-stimulated desorption of adsorbates from the surface is the most likely mechanism responsible for this plasma cooling.