Detection of fluorine emission lines from Grimm-type glow-discharge plasmas - use of neon as the plasma gas

In order to perform the analysis of fluorine in Grimm-type glow-discharge emission spectrometry, the spectra of fluorine emitted by a neon as well as an argon plasma were investigated. While it was hard to detect fluorine emission lines in the argon plasma, not only the atomic lines but also the ionic lines were observed in the neon plasma. The neon plasma should therefore be employed for fluorine analysis. It was suggested that the excitations of fluorine could be primarily attributed to collisional energy transfer from neon species having large internal energies.