Experimental Study of Atmospheric Pressure Glow Discharge

Abstract

The atmospheric pressure glow discharge (APGD) is a new type of the discharge discovered by OKAZAKI et al.[l] recently. The APGD can be used in practical application (e.g. ozone generation), but the phenomena occurring in the discharge are not fully understood. We studied the APGD driven at 50 Hz, applied voltage up to 5 kV and burning in helium, argon and nitrogen. We used a planar configuration of discharge cell:electrode. Between the metal electrode and the dielectric plate a fine metal mesh was placed. For each gas we recorded the time dependence of power supply voltage and the time dependence of charge transferred through the discharge. We recorded also the discharges by the CCD camera with a video recorder. The same measurements were done in case of the discharge cells without the metal mesh. The metal mesh changes the discharge significantly. In the case of discharge cell with the mesh we can observe a homogeneous discharge and only one peak in the discharge current per half cicle of applied voltage while in the case of the discharge without mesh we observed individual micro-discharges and many pulses in the current per half cycle. This effect is most obvious in helium.In order to explain the observed phenomena we calculated the electric field in the discharge cell for APGD and propose a possible explanation of APGD. It has been found that the mesh does not influence the electric field in the discharge gap. Thus we propose that the mesh could influence the discharge by its electrical resistance, which is higher than the resistance of the metallic electrode.

Collective phenomena in volume and surface barrier discharges

“…With additives or a special sandwich structure placing a wire mesh between the dielectric and the metal electrode also in air, O 2 and Ar stable glows were obtained in atmospheric pressure DBDs, even when using a 50 Hz source [34]. These experiments were repeated and confirmed by many groups [35]. The function of the wire mesh at the back side of the dielectric remained a mystery for a long time.…”

“…The function of the wire mesh at the back side of the dielectric remained a mystery for a long time. Through the work of Tepper [36] and that of Fang [35] it was clarified that the mesh initiates a corona discharge that evenly charges the PET (polyethyleneterephthalate) dielectric, which is an electret material. When a certain threshold voltage is reached charge carriers are spontaneously expelled into the main gas gap (polarization switching).…”

Influence of Discharge Atmosphere on the Ageing Behaviour of Plasma-Treated Polylactic Acid

“…For the discharges operating in air and nitrogen, a large number of spike-like current pulses with nanosecond duration randomly appear at every half cycle of the applied voltage, which is typical for a DBD operating in the filamentary mode [25,27,34]. In contrast, for the argon and helium discharges, one single current pulse with durations up to a few ls appear at every half cycle of the applied voltage, which means that these discharges operate in the glow mode [32,34,35]. The discharge power of the DBDs operating in different working gases can be obtained from voltage-versus-charge plots or so-called Lissajous figures [25,27].…”

“…These microdischarges are of nanosecond duration and are randomly distributed over the dielectric surface [24][25][26][27]. With respect to a uniform surface treatment, a homogeneous discharge condition is very desirable and it has been demonstrated that a homogeneous DBD can be obtained under special, quite restrictive conditions [28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

The barrier discharge: basic properties and applications to surface treatment

“…Under (very) special conditions of the operation, there exist a diffuse (glow) mode, too. In the latter case, referred to as atmospheric pressure glow discharge (APGD), the BDs are very suitable for a uniform surface treatment [14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”