This paper reviews the most commonly used methods for the generation of plasmas with special emphasis on non-thermal, low-temperature plasmas for technological applications. We also discuss various technical realizations of plasma sources for selected applications. This paper is further limited to the discussion of plasma generation methods that employ electric fields. The various plasmas described include dc glow discharges, either operated continuously (CW) or pulsed, capacitively and inductively coupled rf discharges, helicon discharges, and microwave discharges. Various examples of technical realizations of plasmas in closed structures (cavities), in open structures (surfatron, planar plasma source), and in magnetic fields (electron cyclotron resonance sources) are discussed in detail. Finally, we mention dielectric barrier discharges as convenient sources of non-thermal plasmas at high pressures (up to atmospheric pressure) and beam-produced plasmas. It is the main objective of this paper to give an overview of the wide range of diverse plasma generation methods and plasma sources and highlight the broad spectrum of plasma properties which, in turn, lead to a wide range of diverse technological and technical applications.

The 11th European Conference on Controlled Fusion and Plasma Physics was held from 5 to 9 September 1983 in the Kármán Auditorium of the University of Aachen, FRG. The Conference, organized by the Nuclear Research Centre Jülich, was attended by nearly 500 participants from over 30 countries, among them guest delegations from several non-European countries. The scientific material was presented in 24 invited papers, 36 short oral contributions, and about 250 posters spread over five poster sessions.The present review is necessarily limited and cannot give proper credit to each work presented at the Conference. According to the Conference programme, this report is divided into ten sections with emphasis on magnetic confinement and related problems and topics.

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A hydrogen plasma with intense extreme ultraviolet and visible emission was generated from low pressure hydrogen gas (0.1-1 mbar) in contact with a hot tungsten filament only when the filament heated a titanium dissociator coated with K 2 CO 3 above 750˚C. The electric field strength from the filament was about 1 V cm −1 , two orders of magnitude lower than the starting voltages measured for gas glow discharges. The emission of the H α and H β transitions as well as the L α and L β transitions were recorded and analysed. The plasma seemed to be far from thermal equilibrium, and no conventional mechanism was found to explain the formation of a hydrogen plasma by incandescently heating hydrogen gas in the presence of trace amounts of K 2 CO 3 . The temporal behaviour of the plasma was recorded via hydrogen Balmer alpha line emission when all power into the cell was terminated and an excessive afterglow duration (2 s) was observed. The plasma was found to be dependent on the chemistry of atomic hydrogen with potassium since no plasma formed with Na 2 CO 3 replacing K 2 CO 3 and the time constant of the emission following the removal of all of the power to the cell matched that of the cooling of the filament and the resulting shift from atomic to molecular hydrogen. Our results indicate that a novel chemical power source is present and that it forms the energetic hydrogen plasma that is a potential new light source.

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