Plasma ionization, excitation, mode transitions and associated electron heating mechanisms in atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) driven by dual radio frequency sources are investigated in this paper. The electrons are found to be heated mainly by the high frequency component in the plasma bulk when discharged in α mode. On the contrary, the low frequency component is primarily responsible for heating in the sheath which is caused by intense motion in the sheath. It was also found that variation of the lower frequency component ratio could effectively modulate the electron energy distribution as determined from time averaged EEDF. The results above have demonstrated that the independent control of plasma parameters via non-linear synergistic effect between the dual frequency sources can be achieved through reasonable selection of processing parameters.

The dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) is a promising technology to generate high density and uniform cold plasmas in atmospheric pressure gases. The effective independent tuning of key plasma parameters is quite important for both application-focused and fundamental studies. In this paper, based on a one-dimensional fluid model with semi-kinetics treatment, numerical studies of ionization asymmetry effects on the properties modulation of atmospheric DBD sustained by tailored voltage waveforms are reported. The driving voltage waveform is characterized by an asymmetric-slope fundamental sinusoidal radio frequency signal superimposing one or more harmonics, and the effects of the number of harmonics, phase shift, as well as the fluctuation of harmonics on the sheath dynamics, impact ionization of electrons and key plasma parameters are investigated. The results have shown that the electron density can exhibit a substantial increase due to the effective electron heating by a spatially asymmetric sheath structure. The strategic modulation of harmonics number and phase shift is capable of raising the electron density significantly (e.g., nearly three times in this case), but without a significant increase in the gas temperature. Moreover, by tailoring the fluctuation of harmonics with a steeper slope, a more profound efficiency in electron impact ionization can be achieved, and thus enhancing the electron density effectively. This method then enables a novel alternative approach to realize the independent control of the key plasma parameters under atmospheric pressure.