Two planar coil designs for a high pressure rf plasma source are investigated using spectroscopic techniques and circuit analysis. In an Ar plasma a truncated version of the commonly used ‘‘spiral’’ coil is found to produce improvements in peak electron density of 20% over the full version. A coil with figure‐8 geometry is found to move plasma inhomogeneities off of center and produce electron densities comparable to the spiral coils. Both of these characteristics are advantageous in industrial applications. Coil design characteristics for favorable power coupling are also determined, including the necessity of closed hydrodynamic plasma loops and the drawback of closely situated antiparallel coil currents. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.