ABSTRACT
The knowledge of plasma flow characteristics is of prime interest for the control, the optimization and the scale-up of microwave plasma assisted diamond deposition reactors. This chapter considers the modeling of thermochemically non equilibrium plasma flows, and presents the details of the fluxes and source terms that involved in transport equations and the expressions of the associated transport coefficients. It discusses the thermodynamic relations for a three temperature flow and boundary conditions. In moderate pressure plasmas the heavy particle-heavy particle elastic collisions frequency is very high and the translation energy transfer during a collision is very efficient. Energy transfer between the translational and rotational modes of the heavy particles is very fast and leads to, in moderate pressure plasmas, equilibrium between rotational modes. The vibrational energy distribution function which quantifies the population of the different vibrational energy levels depends on the kinetics of vibrational excitation by electrons, vibration-vibration quanta exchange and translation-vibration energy exchange.
