Vacuum
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Wikipedia-Article "Vacuum"
For other uses, see vacuum cleaner and Vacuum (musical group).
The root of the word vacuum is the Latin word vacuus (pl. vacua) which means "empty." In physics, a vacuum is a volume of space that is empty of matter, including air, so that gaseous pressure is much less than standard atmospheric pressure.
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Vacuum ranges
Vacuum ranges do not have universally agreed definitions and often depend on the size of the vacuum chamber, but a typical distribution is as follows:
| Low vacuum | 760 to 25 Torr | 100 to 3.3 kPa |
| Medium vacuum | 25 to 1×10-3 Torr | 3.3 kPa to 130 mPa |
| High vacuum | 1×10-3 to 1×10-6 Torr | 130 mPa to 130 µPa |
| Very high vacuum | 1×10-6 to 1×10-9 Torr | 130 µPa to 130 nPa |
| Ultrahigh vacuum | 1×10-9 Torr and less | 130 nPa and less |
Perfect vacuum
A perfect vacuum is an ideal state that cannot practically be obtained in a laboratory, nor even in outer space, where there are a few hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter at 10−14 pascal or 10−16 torr. In modern day usage vacuum is considered to exist in an enclosed space or chamber, when the pressure of gaseous environment is lower than atmospheric pressure (760 Torr or 101 kPa), or has been reduced as much as necessary to prevent the influence of some gas on a process being carried out in that space.
Partial vacuum
Physicists use the term partial vacuum to describe real-life non-ideal vacuum. A complete characterization of the physical state would require further parameters, such as temperature. The antithesis of a vacuum, which is also an ideal unachievable state, is called a plenum.
In engineering, a vacuum is any region where the gas pressure is less than atmospheric pressure. Engineers measure the degree of vacuum in units of pressure. The SI unit of pressure is the pascal (abbreviation Pa), but vacuum is usually measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg) or Torr, with 1 mmHg or 1 Torr equaling 133.3223684 pascals. It is often also measured using the barometric scale, or as a percentage of atmospheric pressure in bars or atms. For commercial purposes, vacuum is often measured in inches of mercury (inHg). This means that the pressure in vacuum, when specified in inches of mercury, is equal to the specified inches of mercury subtracted from 29.92. Thus a vacuum of 26 inHg is equivalent to a pressure of (29.92 - 26) or 3.92 inHg. Here, 29.92 inHg means perfect vacuum.
Degrees of vacuum
- Atmospheric pressure = variable, but standardised at 101.325 kPa (760 Torr) or 760 mm of mercury
- Vacuum cleaner = approximately 80 kPa (600 Torr)
- Mechanical vacuum pump = approximately 100 Pa to 100 μPa (1 Torr to 10−6 Torr)
- Near earth outer space = approximately 100 μPa (10−6 Torr)
- Cryopumped MBE chamber = 100 nPa to 1 nPa (10−9 Torr to 10−11 Torr)
- Pressure on the Moon = approximately 1 nPa (10−11 Torr)
- Interstellar space = approximately 1 fPa (10−17 Torr)
As gas pressure decreases, the mean free path (MFP) of the gas molecules increases. When the MFP is greater than the chamber, pump, spacecraft, or other objects present, the continuum assumptions of fluid mechanics do not apply. This vacuum state is called high vacuum, and the study of fluid flows in this regime is called particle gas dynamics.
In interplanetary and interstellar space, isotropic gas pressure is insignificant when compared to solar pressure, solar wind, and dynamic pressure. Astrophysicists prefer to use density to describe these environments, in units of particles per cubic metre.
Creating a vacuum
The easiest way to create an artificial vacuum is to expand the volume of a container. For example, your muscles expand your lungs to create a partial vacuum inside them, and air rushes in to fill the vacuum. By repeatedly closing off a compartment of the vacuum and exhausting it, it is possible to pump air out of a chamber of fixed size in a manner analogous to pumping a milkshake out of a glass. This is the principle behind most mechanical vacuum pumps. Inside the pump, a mechanism expands a small sealed cavity to create a deep vacuum. Because of the pressure differential, some air from the chamber is pushed into the pump's small cavity. The pump's cavity is then sealed from the chamber, opened to the atmosphere, and squeezed back to a minute size.
A mechanical vacuum pump moves the same volume of gas with each cycle, but as the chamber's pressure drops, this volume contains less and less mass. So although the pumping speed remains constant when measured in litres/second, it drops exponentially when measured in kilograms/second. Meanwhile, the leakage rates, evaporation rates, and sublimation rates produce a constant mass flow into the system. When the pump's mass flow drops to the same level as the mass flows into the chamber, the system asymptotically approaches a constant pressure called the base pressure. Evaporation and sublimation into a vacuum is called outgassing, and the most common source is water absorbed by materials in the chamber. Outgassing can be reduced by desiccation prior to vacuum pumping. The base pressure of a rubber- and plastic-sealed piston pump system is typically 1 to 50 kPa, while a scroll pump might reach 10 Pa and a rotary vane oil pump with a clean and empty metallic chamber can easily achieve 0.1 Pa.
If the dominant mass flow into the vacuum system is chamber leakage or outgassing of materials under vacuum, then the vacuum can be improved simply by installing bigger pumps with a higher volume flow rate. However, there is a point where backstream leakage through the pump and outgassing of the pump oils become the dominant mass flows into the chamber. In this situation, the vacuum will approach the pump's ultimate pressure - the best vacuum that this type of pump can achieve under ideal conditions. Adding more pumps in parallel or bigger pumps of the same type can still improve the pump-down speed, but they will not reduce the base pressure below ultimate. Better pumping technologies must be used to go beyond this barrier.
High vacuum
Fortunately, once the pressure has dropped below 1 kPa or so, another vacuum pumping technique becomes possible. Matter flows differently at different pressures based on the laws of fluid dynamics. At atmospheric pressure and mild vacuums, molecules interact with each other and push on their neighboring molecules in what is known as viscous flow. When the distance between the molecules increases, the molecules interact with the walls of the chamber more often than the other molecules, and molecular pumping becomes more effective than compression pumping. This regime is generally called high vacuum.
Molecular pumps sweep out a larger area than mechanical pumps, and do so more frequently, making them capable of much higher pumping speeds as measured in volume per time. They do this at the expense of the seal between the vacuum and their exhaust. Since there is no seal, a small pressure at the exhaust can easily force flow backstream through the pump; this is called stall. In high vacuum, however, pressure gradients have little effect on fluid flows, and molecular pumps can attain their full potential.
The two main types of molecular pumps are the diffusion pump and the turbomolecular pump. Both types of pumps blow out gas molecules that diffuse into the pump. Diffusion pumps blow out molecules with jets of oil, while turbomolecular pumps use high speed fans. Both of these pumps will stall and fail to pump if exhausted directly to atmospheric pressure, so they must be exhausted to a lower grade vacuum created by a mechanical pump.
As with mechanical pumps, the base pressure will be reached when leakage, outgassing, and backstreaming equal the pump speed, but now minimizing leakage and outgassing to a level comparable to backstreaming becomes much more difficult. High vacuum systems generally require metal chambers with metal O-ring seals such as Klein flanges or ISO flanges. The system must be clean and free of organic matter to minimize outgassing. All materials, solid or liquid, have a small vapour pressure, and their outgassing becomes important when the vacuum pressure falls below this vapour pressure. As a result, many materials that work well in low vacuums, such as epoxy, will become a problematic source of outgassing when attempting to achieve high vacuums.
With these standard precautions, vacuums of 1 mPa are easily achieved with off-the-shelf molecular pumps. With careful design and operation, 1μPa is possible.
Ultra-high vacuum
- Main article: Ultra high vacuum
Even higher vacuums are possible, but they generally require custom-built equipment, strict operational procedures, and a fair amount of trial-and-error. Yet more specialized pumps become useful:
- Converting the molecules of gas to their solid phase by freezing them, called cryopumping or cryotrapping
- Converting them to solids by electrically combining them with other materials, called ion pumping
One such method to create a high vacuum to ultra high vacuum is by the use of cryopumps. Cryopumping incorporates the use of introducing cryogenics and a vacuum system. On a larger scale, the principles are the same as in a Cryomodule
Ultra-high vacuum systems are usually made of stainless steel with metal-gasketed conflat flanges. The system is usually baked, preferably under vacuum, to temporarily raise the vapour pressure of all outgassing materials in the system and boil them off. If necessary, this outgassing of the system can also be performed at room temperature, but this takes much more time. Once the bulk of the outgassing materials are boiled off and evacuated, the system may be cooled to lower vapour pressures and minimize residual outgassing during actual operation. Some systems are cooled well below room temperature by liquid nitrogen to shut down residual outgassing and simultaneously cryopump the system.
In ultra-high vacuum systems, some very odd leakage paths and outgassing sources must be considered. The water absorption of aluminium and palladium becomes an unacceptable source of outgassing, and even the absorptivity of hard metals such as stainless steel or titanium must be considered. Some oils and greases will boil off in extreme vacuums. The porosity of the metallic chamber walls may have to be considered, and the grain direction of the metallic flanges should be parallel to the flange face.
The impact of molecular size must be considered. Smaller molecules can leak in more easily and are more easily absorbed by certain materials, and molecular pumps are less effective at pumping gases with lower molecular weights. Your system may be able to evacuate nitrogen, (the main component of air,) to the desired vacuum, but your chamber could still be full of residual atmospheric hydrogen and helium. Vessels lined with a highly gas-permeable material such as palladium (which is a high-capacity hydrogen sponge) create special outgassing problems.
The lowest pressures currently achievable in laboratory are about 10-13 Pa.
Vacuum in space
Much of outer space has the density and pressure of an almost perfect vacuum. It is cold and has no friction. The properties of the vacuum remain largely unknown.
A perfect vacuum is an ideal state that cannot practically be obtained in a laboratory, nor even in outer space, where there are a few hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter at 10−14 Pascal or 10−16 Torr.
All of the observable universe is also filled with large numbers of photons, the so-called cosmic background radiation, and quite likely a correspondingly large number of neutrinos. The current temperature is about 3 K, being merely 3 degrees above the absolute zero of temperature. Neither these photons nor the neutrinos produce a significant interaction with matter, so stars, planets and spacecraft move freely in this near perfect vacuum of interstellar space.
Stars, planets and moons keep their atmosphere by gravitational attraction, so atmospheres have no firm boundary. The density of gas decreases with distance from the object. In Low Earth Orbit (about 300 km altitude) the atmospheric density is still sufficient to produce significant drag on satellites. Most Earth satellites operate in this region, and they need to fire their engines every few days to maintain orbit. The atmosphere in Low Earth Orbit is increasingly being polluted with man-made debris. Studies have discovered that some satellites retrieved from orbit are coated with a very thin layer of urine and fecal matter evidently released from Russian and US space missions. [1]
Beyond planetary atmospheres, the pressure from photons and other particles from the sun become significant. Spacecraft can be buffeted by solar winds, but planets are too massive to be affected. The idea of using this wind with a solar sail has been proposed for interplanetary travel.
The deep vacuum of space could make it an attractive environment for certain processes, for instance those that require ultraclean surfaces.
In 1913, Norwegian explorer and physicist Kristian Birkeland may have been the first to predict that space is not only a plasma, but also contains "dark matter". He wrote: "It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in "empty" space. (See "Polar Magnetic Phenomena and Terrella Experiments", in The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903 (publ. 1913, p.720)
The quantum-mechanical vacuum
Even an ideal vacuum, thought of as the complete absence of anything, will not in practice remain empty. One reason is that the walls of a vacuum chamber emit light in the form of black-body radiation: visible light if they are at a temperature of thousands of degrees, infrared light if they are cooler. If this soup of photons is in thermodynamic equilibrium with the walls, it can be said to have a particular temperature, as well as a pressure. Another reason that perfect vacuum is impossible is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that no particle can ever have an exact position. Each atom exists as a probability function of space, which has a certain non-zero value everywheres in a given volume. Even the space between molecules is not a perfect vacuum.
More fundamentally, quantum mechanics predicts that vacuum energy can never be exactly zero. The lowest possible energy state is called the zero-point energy and consists of a seething mass of virtual particles that have brief existence. This is called vacuum fluctuation. While most agree that this represents a significant part of particle physics, it is a concept that would benefit from a deeper understanding than currently available. Vacuum fluctuations may also be related to the so-called cosmological constant in the theory of gravitation, if indeed this entity were to be observed in nature on a macroscopic scale. The best support for vacuum fluctuations is the Casimir effect.
In quantum field theory and string theory, the term "vacuum" is used to represent the ground state in the Hilbert space, that is, the state with the lowest possible energy. In free (non-interacting) quantum field theories, this state is analogous to the ground state of a quantum harmonic oscillator. If the theory is obtained by quantization of a classical theory, each stationary point of the energy in the configuration space gives rise to a single vacuum. String theory is believed to be analogous to quantum field theory but one with a huge number of vacua - with the so-called anthropic landscape.
Historical interpretation
Historically, there has been much dispute over whether such a thing as a vacuum can exist. Ancient Greek philosophers did not like to admit the existence of a vacuum, asking themselves "how can 'nothing' be something?". Plato found the idea of a vacuum inconceivable. He believed that all physical things were instantiations of an abstract Platonic ideal, and could not imagine an "ideal" form of a vacuum. Similarly, Aristotle considered the creation of a vacuum impossible—nothing could not be something. Later Greek philosophers thought that a vacuum could exist outside the cosmos, but not inside it.
In the Middle Ages, the idea of a vacuum was thought to be immoral or even heretical. The absence of anything implied the absence of God, and hearkened back to the void prior to the story of creation in the book of Genesis. Medieval thought experiments into the idea of a vacuum considered whether a vacuum was present, if only for an instant, between two flat plates when they were rapidly separated. There was much discussion of whether the air moved in quickly enough as the plates were separated, or, following William Burley whether a 'celestial agent' prevented the vacuum arising—that is, whether nature abhorred a vacuum. This speculation became irrelevant after the Paris condemnations of Bishop Tempier, which required there to be no restrictions on the powers of God, which led to the conclusion that God could create a vacuum if he so wished.
Following work by Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli argued in 1643 that there was a vacuum at the top of a mercury barometer. Some people believe that although Torricelli produced the first vacuum, it was Blaise Pascal who recognized it for what it was. Robert Boyle later conducted experiments on the properties of vacuum. In 1654, Otto von Guericke conducted his famous Magdeburg hemispheres experiment, showing that teams of horses could not separate two hemispheres from which the air had been evacuated. The study of vacuum then lapsed until 1855 when H. Geissler invented the mercury displacement pump and acheives a record vacuum of about 0.1 Torr. A number of electrical properties become observable at this vacuum level, and this renews interest in vacuum.
In the 17th century, theories of the nature of light had proposed the idea of a aethereal medium which would be the medium to convey waves of light (Newton relied on this idea to explain refraction and radiated heat). This evolved into the luminiferous aether idea of the 19th century, but it was known to have significant shortcomings. In 1887 the Michelson-Morley experiment, using an interferometer to attempt to detect the change in the speed of light caused by the Earth moving with respect to the aether, was a famous null result, showing that there really was no static, pervasive medium throughout space and through which the Earth moved as though through a wind. (Of course, if the aether were the medium in which light waves traveled and electromagnetic and gravitational fields manifest, then it would be exceedingly difficult to distinguish the characteristics of such medium from those of the field or fields one was in. It would no more be possible to show that the Earth moved in relation to such an aether than it would be to illustrate that it moved in relation to its own electromagnetic and gravitational fields.)
See also
- Cold cathode - (Device to measure a vacuum)
- Cold trap - (Section to collect unwanted molecules in a vacuum)
- Cryopump - (Device to create a vacuum)
- Diffusion pump - (Device used to create a vacuum)
- Evangelista Torricelli - (Unit of pressure named Torr)
- Helium mass spectrometer - (Technical instrumentation to detect a vacuum leak)
- Hot filament ionization gauge - (Device to measure a vacuum)
- Ionization gauge -(Device to measure a vacuum)
- Ion pump - (Device to create a vacuum)
- Magdeburg hemispheres - (Interesting and historical experiment with vacuum)
- Otto von Guericke - (Interesting and historical experiment with vacuum)
- Engine vacuum
- Outgassing - (Properties in the process of a vacuum)
- Rarefaction - (Reduction of a medium's density)
- Suction -(Creation of a partial vacuum)
- Turbopump - (Device to create a vacuum)
- Ultra high vacuum - (Region of the vacuum spectrum)
- Vacuum pump (Device to create a vacuum)
- Vacuum angle
External links
- American Vacuum Society
- Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A
- Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B
- Discussion of the effects on humans of exposure to hard vacuums.
- Vacuum Energy in High Energy Physics
- Scientist of vacuum
- http://www.mcallister.com/vacuum.html (Short History of Vacuum Terminology and Technology)
