Micro-sphere levitation in a sheath of a low pressure continuous discharge

Electrode sheath profile measurements are reported, with dust particles in suspension and without. With the shape of the unperturbed potential profile, basic characteristics can be predicted as the surface potential, the charge and potential energy of a dust particle in function of its position in the sheath. The dust particle screening length is also estimated analyzing binary collisions in a gas phase cloud. In the presence of dust particles, an average increase of ion drift velocities is measured showing that micron-sized particles whose charge is due to the electron and ion fluxes produce a self-consistent redistribution of the plasma particle fluxes.