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The main objective of this work is to contribute to the understanding of the grafting of nitrogen and amino surface functional groups on polymers by means of plasmas containing nitrogen and hydrogen. For this purpose, many aspects of plasma surface modification were studied. In the frame of this work, a new, UHV-sealed plasma reactor system was put into operation. The system is special for its clean reaction environment and the possibility to perform quasi in situ XPS measurements. A comparison of the UHV system to a fine vacuum reactor showed that a clean reaction environment is mandatory for reproducible plasma processing and efficient nitrogen and amino functionalisation. A key motivation for the present work was the observation that the non-coating plasma processes reported in literature fail to graft primary amino groups on polymer surfaces with densities that significantly exceed 3 - 4% NH2/C. In order to investigate this phenomenon in detail, this work followed two experimental tracks: On the one hand, a broad systematic study of plasma processing parameters was performed. On the other, the surface diagnostics methods used for the quantification of amino groups were critically reviewed. For this, a numerical algorithm was developed to reconstruct the element depth profile from angle-resolved XPS data. In the scope of the process parameter study, cw and pulsed microwave (MW) plasma excitation was compared to radio-frequency (RF) excitation. The home-built MW source was studied and optimised with respect to ignition behaviour and power efficiency. The performance of the MW and RF plasmas in polymer surface modifications was studied in various gas mixtures containing NH3 and H,, or N2 and H,. Also the differences of glow and afterglow processing of polymers were investigated. Large variations of the nitrogen and primary amino grafting efficiencies were obtained. They triggered a number of new ideas for the underlying reaction mechanisms. Special attendance was devoted to the selectivity of the functionalisation processes for primary amino groups. Nitrogen-containing discharges that were rich in hydrogen achieved selectivities up to 100%. The upper limit of 3 - 4% amino groups on the surface, however, was not passed. Angle-resolved XPS measurements revealed a systematic problem for the definition of a surface density, which is capable of explaining the upper limit for amino groups. It is either due to a limited labelling depth of amino groups by the applied TFBA derivatisation reaction, or to a limited functionalisation depth of the plasma process. One very efficient nitrogen-grafting plasma process that was developed on polystyrene was applied to seven other unfluorinated polymers. The similarity of the resulting functionalisation demonstrated a good transfer-ability of plasma surface functionalisation processes. Plasma treatments of polymer surfaces, especially in hydrogen-containing gases, are known to be generally followed by uncontrollable oxidation phenomena. The properties of plasma-functionalised polymer surfaces were therefore studied in conjunction with ageing effects. Quasi in situ XPS analysis allowed to distinguish the influence of oxygen contamination during the plasma process from post-process oxidation due to contact of plasma-treated samples to atmospheric oxygen. The surface modification experiments were accompanied by several gas phase diagnostic techniques. In the scope of this work, the UHV reactor system was equipped with optical emission spectroscopy (OES), two-photon absorption laser-induced fluorescence (TALIF), and tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS). A separate plasma source was setup to perform an absolute quantification of the vacuum-ultra-violet (VUV) emission intensity of hydrogen-containing MW-excited plasmas. The techniques were evaluated with respect to their contribution to an understanding of the plasma processing of polymers. The rich experimental data allowed to suggest new reaction mechanisms for the grafting of nitrogen- and amino functional groups. Surface passivation experiments in H, plasmas of nitrogen-functionalised surfaces initiated a re-evaluation and an extension of the mechanism of selective etching [1]. Together with two other new reaction mechanisms, a hypothetical reaction scheme was suggested. It was studied by the help of two numerical models for heterogenous reactions of radicals with the surface. In order to avoid the complexity of the fragmentation process of NH,, the models were restricted to discharges in N, and H9. Despite the sparse information on the composition of the gas phase, the data of two experimental series showed a very particular phenomenology that allowed a first test of the model. The test supports the newly-suggested reaction mechanisms. Especially the role of NH2 attachment to open reaction sites for the grafting of amino groups was emphasised. A more stringent test of the model is left to future experiments with extended gas phase diagnostic means.
Within the scope of this work, a versatile large linear magnetised plasma experiment was designed, constructed, and subsequently put into operation. The magnetised plasma was used to investigate the dispersion of whistler waves (circular polarised electromagnetic waves) with regard to the influence of the plasma boundaries. After a brief review over electromagnetic plasma waves and the three discharge modes of a helicon source, the experimental device and the diagnostic tools are explained in detail. Great attention is devoted to the identification of a reliable, calibrated magnetic fluctuation probe design. To the understanding of dynamical phenomena in ionospheric plasmas, whistler wave measurements in laboratory experiments may contribute significantly because of the ability to vary plasma parameters and to do measurements with high spatial and temporal resolution. However, the boundaries of laboratory experiments change the dispersion behaviour of whistler waves significantly if compared to the unbounded ionospheric situation. The influence of the plasma boundary is studied in the present work on three different levels of increasing complexity. First, a high density, small wavelength regime is established to make the effect of the boundary negligible. Measurements are in full agreement with whistler wave theory for unbounded plasma geometry. Measurements below the ion cyclotron frequency reveal the strong influence of the ion dynamics on whistler wave propagation, but are not straightforward to interpret in terms of dispersion theory. Second, the other limit case is examined: bounded plasma helicon modes. These waves are, mathematically speaking, eigenfunctions of the plasma-boundary system and are of great practical importance for high density plasma discharges, the helicon source. Careful measurements of the equilibrium plasma parameters as well as the magnetic fluctuation profiles of the helicon source are done in all three modes of operation, the capacitive, inductive, and helicon wave sustained mode. The first two modes are fairly well understood and the measurements are consistent with existing models. The high density helicon mode, however, is still a scientific case. The measurements partially confirm existing assumptions. It is demonstrated that the plasma production is detached from the antenna edge region. Moreover, it is shown that the plasma parameters are self-consistently determined by the antenna geometry and the discharge parameters according to basic helicon wave theory. Finally, it is ruled out that the plasma density is the control parameter determining the transition point into the high density helicon mode. The measurements rather suggest that the rf power density is the important value. As a third aspect, whistler waves in an intermediate wavelength regime are studied and the transition from unbounded to bounded plasma wave dispersion is systematically investigated. It is shown both experimentally and numerically that the wave dispersion in a plasma filled metal waveguide cannot be determined solely from wave vector measurements parallel to the magnetic field. For a correct description, the perpendicular mode profile has to be correctly taken into account. In contrast to simple helicon wave theory, it is demonstrated that the perpendicular mode profile is not only determined by the conducting vessel boundaries alone but the entire plasma-boundary system has to be considered as a unity. To summarise, this work has contributed to a better understanding of the physics of the propagation of whistler waves, where the particular role of metal boundaries acting as wave guides was highlighted. This basic science approach to the waves' dynamics is believed to be of significance in the course of the scientific debate on the physics principles of helicon discharges.
Turbulence is a state of a physical system characterized by a high degree of spatiotemporal disorder. Turbulent processes are driven by instabilities exhibiting complex nonlinear dynamics, which span over several spatial as well as temporal scales. Apart from fluids and gases, turbulence is observed in plasmas. While turbulent mixing of a system is sometimes a desired effect, often turbulence is an undesired state. In hot, magnetically confined plasmas, envisaged for energy generation by thermonuclear fusion, plasma turbulence is clearly a problem, since the magnetic confinement time is drastically deteriorated by turbulent transport. Hence, a control mechanism to influence and to suppress turbulence is of significance for future fusion power devices. An important area of plasma turbulence is drift wave turbulence. Drift waves are characterized by currents parallel to the ambient magnetic field, that are tightly coupled to a coherent mode structure rotating in the perpendicular plane. In the present work, the control of drift waves and drift wave turbulence is experimentally investigated in the linear magnetized helicon experiment VINETA. Two different open-loop control systems - electrostatic and electromagnetic - are used to drive dynamically parallel currents. It is observed that the dynamics of the drift waves can be significantly influenced by both control schemes. If the imposed mode number as well as the rotation direction match those of the drift waves, classical synchronization effects like, e.g., frequency locking, frequency pulling, and Arnold tongues are observed. These confirm the nonlinear interaction between the control signal and the drift wave dynamics. Finally, the broadband drift wave turbulence, and thereby turbulent transport, is considerably reduced if the applied control signal is sufficiently large in amplitude.
Impurity ions pose a potentially serious threat to fusion plasma performance by affecting the confinement in various, usually deleterious, ways. Due to the creation of helium ash during fusion reactions and the interaction of the plasma with the wall components, which makes it possible for heavy ions to penetrate into the core plasma, impurities can intrinsically not be avoided. Therefore, it is essential to study their behaviour in the fusion plasma in detail. Within the framework of this thesis, different problems arising in connection with impurities have been investigated. 1. Collisional damping of zonal flows in tokamkas: The effect of impurities on the collisional damping of zonal flows is investigated. Since the Coulomb collision frequency increases with increasing ion charge, heavy, highly charged impurities play an important role in this process. The effect of such impurities on the linear response of the plasma to an external potential perturbation, as caused by zonal flows, is calculated with analytical methods and compared with numerical simulations, resulting in good agreement. 2. Impurity transport driven by microturbulence in tokamaks: Fine scale turbulence driven by microinstabilities is a source of particle and heat transport in a fusion reactor. A semi-analytical model is presented describing the resulting impurity fluxes and the stability boundary of the underlying mode. The results are compared with numerical simulations. Both the impurity flux and the stability boundary are found to depend strongly on the plasma parameters such as the impurity density and the temperature gradient. 3. Pfirsch-Schlüter transport in stellarators: Due to geometry effects, collisional transport plays a much more prominent role in stellarators than in tokamaks. Analytical expressions for the particle and heat fluxes in an impure, collisional plasma are derived from first principles. Contrary to the tokamak case, where collisional transport is exclusively caused directly by friction, in stellarators an additional source of transport exists, namely pressure anisotropy. Since this term is, contrary to the contribution from friction, non-ambipolar, it plays an important role regarding the ambipolar electric field. Furthermore, the behaviour of heavy impurities in the presence of strong radial temperature and density gradients is studied, which lead to a redistribution of the impurities on the flux surfaces. As a consequence, the radial impurity flux is decreased considerably compared with a plasma in which the impurities are evenly distributed on the flux surfaces.
Particle and heat transport in fusion devices often exceed the neoclassical prediction. This anomalous transport is thought to be produced by turbulence caused by microinstabilities such as ion and electron-temperature-gradient (ITG/ETG) and trapped-electron-mode (TEM) instabilities, the latter ones known for being strongly influenced by collisions. Additionally, in stellarators, the neoclassical transport can be important in the core, and therefore investigation of the effects of collisions is an important field of study. Prior to this thesis, however, no gyrokinetic simulations retaining collisions had been performed in stellarator geometry. In this work, collisional effects were added to EUTERPE, a previously collisionless gyrokinetic code which utilizes the δ f method. To simulate the collisions, a pitch-angle scattering operator was employed, and its implementation was carried out following the methods proposed in [Takizuka & Abe 1977, Vernay Master's thesis 2008]. To test this implementation, the evolution of the distribution function in a homogeneous plasma was first simulated, where Legendre polynomials constitute eigenfunctions of the collision operator. Also, the solution of the Spitzer problem was reproduced for a cylinder and a tokamak. Both these tests showed that collisions were correctly implemented and that the code is suited for more complex simulations. As a next step, the code was used to calculate the neoclassical radial particle flux by neglecting any turbulent fluctuations in the distribution function and the electric field. Particle fluxes in the neoclassical analytical regimes were simulated for tokamak and stellarator (LHD) configurations. In addition to the comparison with analytical fluxes, a successful benchmark with the DKES code was presented for the tokamak case, which further validates the code for neoclassical simulations. In the final part of the work, the effects of collisions were investigated for slab and toroidal ITGs and TEMs in a tokamak configuration. The results show that collisions reduce the growth rate of slab ITGs in cylinder geometry, whereas they do not affect ITGs in a tokamak, which are mainly curvature-driven. However it is important to note that the pitch-angle scattering operator does not conserve momentum, which is most critical in the parallel direction. Therefore, the damping found in a cylinder could be the consequence of this missing feature and not a physical result [Dimits & Cohen 1994]. Nonetheless, the results are useful to determine whether the instability is mainly being driven by a slab or toroidal ITG mode. EUTERPE also has the feature of including kinetic electrons, which made simulations of TEMs with collisions possible. The combination of collisions and kinetic electrons made the numerical calculations extremely time-consuming, since the time step had to be small enough to resolve the fast electron motion. In contrast to the ITG results, it was observed that collisions are extremely important for TEMs in a tokamak, and in some special cases, depending on whether they were mainly driven by density or temperature gradients, collisions could even suppress the mode (in agreement with [Angioni et al. 2005, Connor et al. 2006]). In the case of stellarators it was found that ITGs are highly dependent on the device configuration. For LHD it was shown that collisions slightly reduce the growth rate of the instability, but for Wendelstein 7-X they do not affect it and the growth rate showed a similar trend with collisionality to that of the tokamak case. Collisions also tend to make the ballooning structure of the modes less pronounced.
Diese Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit der Erzeugung von edelmetallfreien Katalysatoren für die Sauerstoffreduktion in Brennstoffzellen. Dabei wird ein neuartiger, dualer Plasmaprozess entwickelt, aufgebaut und die so-erzeugten Schichten mit verschiedenen elektrochemischen (CV, RDE und RRDE) und strukturanalytischen Methoden (SEM, EDX, IR, XPS, Leitfähigkeit, XRD, NEXAFS, EXAFS und TEM) untersucht. Auf diese Weise ist es erstmalig gelungen edelmetallfreie Katalysatoren mit einem Plasmaprozess herzustellen, ohne dass eine zusätzliche Pyrolyse benötigt wird. Die katalytische Aktivität der Schichten ist außerdem deutlich höher als die von rein chemisch hergestellten Metall–Polypyrrol-Schichten.
The confinement of energy has always been a challenge in magnetic confinement fusion devices. Due to their toroidal shape there exist regions of high and low magnetic field, so that the particles are divided into two classes - trapped ones that are periodically reflected in regions of high magnetic field with a characteristic frequency, and passing particles, whose parallel velocity is high enough that they largely follow a magnetic field line around the torus without being reflected. The radial drift that a particle experiences due to the field inhomogeneity depends strongly on its position, and the net drift therefore depends on the path taken by the particle. While the radial drift is close to zero for passing particles, trapped particles experience a finite radial net drift and are therefore lost in classical stellarators. These losses are described by the so-called neoclassical transport theory. Recent optimised stellarator geometries, however, in which the trapped particles precess around the torus poloidally and do not experience any net drift, promise to reduce the neoclassical transport down to the level of tokamaks. In these optimised stellarators, the neoclassical transport becomes small enough so that turbulent transport may limit the confinement instead. The turbulence is driven by small-scale-instabilities, which tap the free energy of density or temperature gradients in the plasma. Some of these instabilities are driven by the trapped particles and therefore depend strongly on the magnetic geometry, so the question arises how the optimisation affects the stability. In this thesis, collisionless electrostatic microinstabilities are studied both analytically and numerically. Magnetic configurations where the action integral of trapped-particle bounce motion, J, only depends on the radial position in the plasma and where its maximum is in the plasma centre, so-called maximum-J configurations, are of special interest. This condition can be achieved approximately in quasi-isodynamic stellarators, for example Wendelstein 7-X. In such configurations the precessional drift of the trapped particles is in the opposite direction from the direction of propagation of drift waves. Instabilities that are driven by the trapped particles usually rely on a resonance between these two frequencies. Here it is shown analytically by analysing the electrostatic energy transfer between the particles and the instability that, thanks to the absence of the resonance, a particle species draws energy from the mode if the frequency of the mode is well below the charateristic bounce frequency. Due to the low electron mass and the fast bounce motion, electrons are almost always found to be stabilising. Most of the trapped-particle instabilities are therefore predicted to be absent in maximum- J configurations in large parts of parameter space. Analytical theory thus predicts enhanced linear stability of trapped-particle modes in quasi-isodynamic stellarators compared with tokamaks. Moreover, since the electrons are expected to be stabilising, or at least less destabilising, for all instabilities whose frequency lies below the trapped-electron bounce frequency, other modes might benefit from the enhanced stability as well. In reality, however, stellarators are never perfectly quasi-isodynamic, and the question thus arises whether they still benefit from enhanced stability. Here the stability properties of Wendelstein 7-X and a more quasi-isodynamic configuration, QIPC, are investigated numerically and compared with another, non-quasiisodynamic stellarator, the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) and a typical tokamak. In gyrokinetic simulations, performed with the gyrokinetic code GENE in the electrostatic and collisionless approximation, several microinstabilities, driven by the density as well as both ion and electron temperature gradients, are studied. Wendelstein 7-X and QIPC exhibit significantly reduced growth rates for all simulations that include kinetic electrons, and the latter are indeed found to be stabilising when the electrostatic energy transfer is analysed. In contrast, if only the ions are treated kinetically but the electrons are taken to be in thermodynamic equilibrium, no such stabilising effect is observed. These results suggest that imperfectly optimised stellarators can retain most of the stabilising properties predicted for perfect maximum-J configurations. Quasi-isodynamic stellarators, in addition to having reduced neoclassical transport, might therefore also show reduced turbulent transport, at least in certain regions of parameter space.
There is a wide variety of Alfvén waves in tokamak and stellarator plasmas. While most of them are damped, some of the global eigenmodes can be driven unstable when they interact with energetic particles. By coupling the MHD code CKA with the gyrokinetic code EUTERPE, a hybrid kinetic-MHD model is created to describe this wave–particle interaction in stellarator geometry. In this thesis, the CKA-EUTERPE code package is presented. This numerical tool can be used for linear perturbative stability analysis of Alfvén waves in the presence of energetic particles. The equations for the hybrid model are based on the gyrokinetic equations. The fast particles are described with linearized gyrokinetic equations. The reduced MHD equations are derived by taking velocity moments of the gyrokinetic equations. An equation for describing the Alfvén waves is derived by combining the reduced MHD equations. The Alfvén wave equation can retain kinetic corrections. Considering the energy transfer between the particles and the waves, the stability of the waves can be calculated. Numerically, the Alfvén waves are calculated using the CKA code. The equations are solved as an eigenvalue problem to determine the frequency spectrum and the mode structure of the waves. The results of the MHD model are in good agreement with other sophisticated MHD codes. CKA results are shown for a JET and a W7-AS example. The linear version of the EUTERPE code is used to study the motion of energetic particles in the wavefield with fixed spatial structure, and harmonic oscillations in time. In EUTERPE, the gyrokinetic equations are discretized with a PIC scheme using the delta-f method, and both full orbit width and finite Larmor radius effects are included. The code is modified to be able to use the wavefield calculated externally by CKA. Different slowing-down distribution functions are also implemented. The work done by the electric field on the particles is measured to calculate the energy transfer between the particles and the wave and from that the growth rate is determined. The advantage of this approach is that the full magnetic geometry is retained without any limiting assumptions on guiding center orbits. Extensive benchmarks have been performed to test the new CKA-EUTERPE code. Three tokamak benchmarks are presented, where the stability of TAE modes are studied as a function of fast particle energy, or in one case as a function of the fast particle charge. The benchmarks show good agreement with other codes. Stellarator calculations were performed for Wendelstein 7-AS and the results demonstrate that the finite orbit width effects tend to be strongly stabilizing.
The development of innovative coatings with multifunctional properties is an ambitious task in modification of material surfaces. A novel approach is a hybrid method combining the non-thermal plasma processing with nanotechnology for the development of multifunctional surface coatings. The conception of the hybrid coating process is based on three steps: the preparation of a suspension consisting of an organic liquid and functional nanoparticles, the deposition of the suspension as a thin liquid film on the material surface, and the plasma modification of the liquid organic film to achieve a thin solid composite film with embedded nanoparticles demonstrating multifunctional properties and good adherence on the substrate material. In this work the liquid polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was applied as a model system, and the experimental investigations were focused on the PDMS plasma modification. In particular, the specific role of the different plasma components and the influence of the plasma and processing parameters on the PDMS modification were studied. The applied capacitively coupled radio frequency (CCRF) plasma was analyzed by electric probe measurements and optical emission spectroscopy, whereas the molecular changes in PDMS due to plasma-induced chemical reactions were studied by the Fourier transform infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy. Additionally, the photocatalytic activity of thin composite films consisting of plasma cross-linked PDMS with embedded TiO2 nanoparticles was demonstrated. During the investigation it was found that the CCRF discharge modifies efficiently thin liquid PDMS films to solid coatings. The samples were positioned in the plasma bulk at floating potential. The penetration depth of particles like neutrals, ions, electrons and radicals in the film is strongly limited. The heating of samples in the CCRF discharge is weak to modify PDMS by itself and only the plasma radiation is able to transform the liquid bulk to solid one. It is known that the absorption onset of PDMS lies in the VUV region (below 200 nm). The energetic VUV radiation penetrates into the PDMS film on a thickness from several hundred nanometers to few micrometers and initiates photochemical reactions there. Thus, different gases like Ar, Xe, O2, H2O, air and H2 were tested to provide the strongest VUV emission intensity of the CCRF discharge. Discharge pressure and power were varied for all these gases and it was found that at all conditions the H2 plasma demonstrates drastically stronger emission. Thus, H2 gas was selected for the plasma treatment of liquid PDMS films. The IRRAS analysis revealed the transformation process of PDMS with the degradation of CH3 groups, the formation of new groups like SiOH, CH2 and SiH, the formation of the SiOx material and crosslinking. It was found that the modification effect is not uniform across the film thickness. The top region with an initial thickness up to 100 nm loses all CH3 groups, in the underlying region the CH3 concentration increases gradually from zero to the value for PDMS, if the film was thick enough. The methyl-free SiOx top layer contains also SiOH and SiH groups. Furthermore, the SiH groups are concentrated only in a very thin layer with a thickness below 10 nm. The presence of the unscreened polar SiOSi and SiOH groups on the surface causes the adsorption of H2O from the atmosphere, which was also observed by IRRAS. By means of the spectroscopic ellipsometry it was found out that all above described regions experience a shrinking. The reason is the crosslinking and loss of material. The most shrunken layer is the top SiOx layer with the shrinking ratio (final thickness/initial thickness) of 0.55 - 0.60. Further, this ratio gradually rise up to the value of 0.95 in the deeper region, which has the concentration of CH3 groups of about that for PDMS. After the analysis of all results the depth of effective modification was estimated at 300 400 nm for the most optimal conditions. The optimization of the plasma VUV intensity was realized by variation of discharge pressure and power. The strongest plasma emission at studied conditions provided the irradiance of the sample of ca. 13 mW/cm2. However, such strong radiation causes very strong production rate of the gases. These products leave the modifying film slower as they are produced, what causes their accumulation in there. Their pressure grows up leading to formation of bubbles, which later explode. Finally, the film becomes heavily damaged. To avoid this effect the pressure and the RF power were changed to reduce the irradiance to 6 - 7 mW/cm2. This resulted in the absence of any damages.
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process where a change in field line connectivity occurs in a current sheet at the boundary between regions of opposing magnetic fields. In this process, energy stored in the magnetic field is converted into kinetic and thermal energy, which provides a source of plasma heating and energetic particles. Magnetic reconnection plays a key role in many space and laboratory plasma phenomena, e.g. solar flares, Earth’s magnetopause dynamics and instabilities in tokamaks. A new linear device (VINETAII) has been designed for the study of the fundamental physical processes involved in magnetic reconnection. The plasma parameters are such that magnetic reconnection occurs in a collision-dominated regime. A plasma gun creates a localized current sheet, and magnetic reconnection is driven by modulating the plasma current and the magnetic field structure. The plasma current is shown to flow in response to a combination of an externally induced electric field and electrostatic fields in the plasma, and is highly affected by axial sheath boundary conditions. Further, the current is changed by an additional axial magnetic field (guide field), and the current sheet geometry was demonstrated to be set by a combination of magnetic mapping and cross-field plasma diffusion. With increasing distance from the plasma gun, magnetic mapping results in an increase of the current sheet length and a decrease of the width. The control parameter is the ratio of the guide field to the reconnection magnetic field strength. Cross-field plasma diffusion leads to a radial expansion of the current sheet at low guide fields. Plasma currents are also observed in the azimuthal plane and were found to originate from a combination of the field-aligned current component and the diamagnetic current generated by steep in-plane pressure gradients in combination with the guide field. The reconnection rate, defined via the inductive electric field, is shown to be directly linked to the time-derivative of the plasma current. The reconnection rate decreases with increasing ratio of the guide field to the reconnection magnetic field strength, which is attributed to the plasma current dependency on axial boundary conditions and the plasma gun discharge. The above outlined results offer insights into the complex interaction between magnetic fields, electric fields, and the localized current flows during reconnection.