Although PLASMAKIN can deal with a large diversity of properties and types of chemical reactions and to respond to different problems found in plasma physics, some reaction types are not yet supported or functionalities found in other chemical kinetic libraries or programs [Kee96, Carver97] have not been included.
The following functionalities are being prepared for future versions or have been intentionally left out:
PLASMAKIN does not yet include any particle or chemical reaction database. In fact, although there are some reference databases, the number of gases and reactions covered in those databases is still small comparing to the diversity of applications of plasma physics and data needed. Also, different procedures and levels of approximation for the description of species and reactions are common in this field. Consequently the user has to prepare his own selection of data. To facilitate this the author has provided enough flexibility in the data structures in order to accommodate different ways of data representation. One of the improvements planned for the future is a database of species and reactions, based on reference results. This database will provide the basic framework to build a user defined database and the most common chemical species in gas discharges and well established reactions.
PLASMAKIN does not provide either any differential equation solver or any other integration procedure. As the number of numerical procedures available is relatively large and in continuous evolution, the selection of the appropriate algorithm is largely problem dependent and a good number of numerical libraries are freely available and well documented [1], the choice of the appropriate algorithm was again left to the user.
PLASMAKIN does not includes an electron Boltzmann equation solver. Although the electron and the chemical kinetics are interconnected - the rate coefficients depend on the electron kinetics, which depends in turn on species concentration - the available methods of solution for the electron Boltzmann equation are valid only for clearly defined conditions and there is no "universal" solver. Again, for problems where both kinetics must be solved together, the choice of the appropriate electron Boltzmann equation solver was left to the user. Nevertheless an electron kinetics library, build on top of PLASMAKIN, and solving the electron Boltzmann equation in the hydrodynamic regime based on the two term approximation is available from the author for non-commercial use (mailto: npinhao@itn.pt?subject=Inquire on Boltzlib).
Finally PLASMAKIN does not use some approximations common in other fields - i.e. the "family approach" used in atmospheric chemistry - as they are seldom used in "gaseous electronics" problems.
Generalize the handling of vibrational groups to polyatomic molecules and extend the type of reactions with vibrational levels supported.
Improve the handling of surface reactions.
Evaluate the surface coverage and sticking coefficients.
Interfaces to C and Python mixed language programming.
| [1] | See, for instance, GAMS or NetLib. |