Seeding of Gases for Magnetohydrodynamic Applications

Abstract

To achieve sufficiently high electron concentrations at reasonable temperatures for MHD applications, a general approach using seeding compounds rather than elements is discussed together with an extensive survey of the literature. Several examples are given in which the ionization potential of a compound is lower than the elements composing the compound. A trend in the ionization potential to decrease with decreasing valency unsaturation is noted, and some evidence for this is given.