Ionization waves (propagating bullet-shaped plasma) are always present in atmospheric-pressure plasma jets generated by a pulsed DC power supply or low-frequency voltages. Nevertheless, whether these ionization waves exist for pulsed microwave plasma jets remains unclear. In this paper, a coaxial transmission line resonator driven by microwave pulses is capable of generating atmospheric pressure plasma jet plumes. Depending on the discharges, these plasma jet plumes exhibit distinctive characteristics, such as bullet-shaped ionization fronts for argon plasma and ball-shaped for helium plasma. Fast images show argon plasma plumes generating several small branches but only one dominant ionization front travels more distance along the jet axis. Both ionization-wave images and electromagnetic simulation results indicate that the bullet-shaped ionization front forms a plasma jet plume immediately. The dominant ionization wave is resonantly excited by the local enhanced electric field, which originates from the local net charge of the streamer plus surface plasmon polariton located at the open end of the resonator.
In the present study, atmospheric pressure argon plasma jets driven by lower-power pulsed microwaves have been proposed with a type of hairpin resonator. The plasma jet plume demonstrates distinctive characteristics, like arched plasma pattern and local plasma bullets. In order to understand how the hairpin resonator works, electromagnetic simulation of the electric field distribution and self-consistent fluid simulation of the interaction between the enhanced electric field and the pulse plasma plume are studied. Simulated spatio-temporal distributions of the electric field, the electron temperature, the electron density, and the absorbed power density have been sampled, respectively. The experimental and simulated results together suggest that the driving mechanism of the hairpin resonator works in the multiple electromagnetic modes of transmission line and microwave resonator, while the local plasma bullets are resonantly generated by local enhanced electric field of surface plasmon polaritons. Moreover, it should be noticed that the radian of the arched plasma plume is mainly affected by the input power and gas flow rate, respectively.
A stepwise propagation of a guided streamer along a helium atmospheric pressure plasma jet driven by a dielectric barrier discharge was recorded. To feed the plasma jet, we used a power supply generating an output voltage signal consisting of a superposition of 41.6 kHz bipolar square pulses and 300 kHz oscillating signals. At a positive half a period of the output voltage signal, a step-by-step propagation was observed for the ionization wave along the plasma jet. The streamer head stops with the decrease in voltage in the first cycle of oscillations and then restarts its motion at the voltage front of the next cycle of a voltage oscillation. The streamer propagation velocity and plasma jet length are likely to be controlled by varying the gas flow rate, bias voltage, voltage rise rate, frequency of oscillations in the pulse, and other parameters.
Different discharge morphologies in atmospheric Ar and He plasmas are excited by using a pulsed microwave hairpin resonator. Ar plasmas form an arched plasma plume at the opened end of the hairpin, whereas He plumes generate only a contracted plasmas in between both tips of metal electrodes. Despite this different point, their discharge processes have three similar characteristics: (i) the ionization occurs at the main electrode firstly and then develops to the slave electrode, (ii) during the shrinking stage the middle domain of the discharge channels disappears at last, and (iii) even at zero power input (in between pulses) a weak light region always exists in the discharge channels. Both experimental results and electromagnetic simulations suggest that the discharge is resonantly excited by the local enhanced electric fields. In addition, Ar ionization and excitation energies are lower than those of He, the effect of Ar gas flow is far greater than that of He gas, and the contribution of accelerated electrons only locates at the domain with the strongest electric fields. These reasons could be used to interpret the different characteristic plume morphologies of the proposed atmospheric Ar and He plasmas.
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