An ion-molecular chemical model of dense aluminum vapor plasma

A chemical model of nonideal gas-plasma mixture is proposed to describe a dense plasma of aluminum vapors. The molecules and the molecular ions are taken into consideration in addition to the conventionaly utilized set of electrons, ions and atoms to advance to low temperatures; doubly and triply ionized ions are considered for the high-temperature region. The effects of density are taken into account in a virial approximation. The virial corrections for the charge-charge and the charge-atom interactions are critically analyzed and chosen. The caloric and thermal equation of state, as well as the plasma composition have been obtained. It has been shown that an important role play molecules and molecular ions of aluminum especially in the early stage of heating of metal vapors. A satisfactory agreement with experimental results is obtained in the range of applicability of the model.