Chlorine plasma parameters and the mechanisms of both volume and heterogeneous reactions were investigated using a combination of experimental methods and plasma modeling. It was found that increasing gas pressure within the range 20-200 Pa leads to sufficient deformation of the electron energy, distribution function and to corresponding changes in kinetic and transport coefficients. Direct electron impact dissociation and ionization were found to be the main mechanisms for radical and ion generation, while contributions from dissociative attachment and dissociative ionization were negligible. Heterogeneous recombination of chlorine atoms is the dominant decay channel, which is described by a first-order kinetic mechanism. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All tights reserved.