Usachev A D, Zobnin A V, Petrov O F, Fortov V E, Annaratone B M, Thoma M H, Höfner H, Kretschmer M, Fink M, Morfill G E
Joint Institute for High Temperatures of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 125412, Russia.
Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Jan 30;102(4):045001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.045001. Epub 2009 Jan 26.
An attraction between negatively charged micron-sized plastic particles was observed in the bulk of a low-pressure gas-discharge plasma under microgravity conditions. This attraction had led to the formation of a boundary-free dust cluster, containing one big central particle with a radius of about 6 microm and about 30 1 microm-sized particles situated on a sphere with a radius of 190 microm and with the big particle in the center. The stability of this boundary-free dust cluster was possible due to its confinement by the plasma flux on the central dust particle.
