Current-Mode Approach in Power Supplies for DBD Excilamps: Review of 4 Topologies

Abstract

This document reviews the current-mode supply approach for dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) excilamps. It briefly demonstrates why this mode assures the control of the power injected into the DBD. Considerations with the step-up transformer required for the correct operation of the currentmode are developed. This document shows and compares four different converter topologies that comply with this principle. This comparison is made in terms of electric efficiency and luminous efficacy using experimental measurements.

Efficiency of an Exciplex DBD Lamp Excited Under Different Methods

“…This can be attributed to the fact that for the levels of current obtained for this topology a significant increment of the lamp efficiency happens aŝ I DBD rises; from previous experiments employing a squareshaped current supply, an important augmentation of the lamp efficiency has been achieved by employing more intense current pulses [15].…”

“…These operating points are selected on the basis of previous researches concerning the DBD lamps operation and the impact of the operating point over their performance [17]. After characterization of the employed DBD lamp an equivalent electrical model with C d = 80 pF, C g = 30 pF, and V th = 1350 V was obtained [15].…”

“…All the employed supply topologies operate from a dc voltage source; each one of them has been already described in [15]; consequently, only a brief description is presented here.…”

System for experimental investigation of DBD excilamps in view of control and optimization of UV emission

“…The practical usefulness and applicability of currently available DBD excilamps has been demonstrated [16,21]; today, studies oriented toward their performance improvement are in development. This can be achieved by means of the reactor design optimization (geometry, filling mixture, pressure and materials) [3,6,11,17,24], and also by choosing the proper electrical operating conditions [4,8,13,14,18,19,25]. The approach developed in this paper is aimed at performing system level optimization, integrating in the same step DBD reactor and power supply designs.…”

“…From previous works a significant impact of the supplying conditions over the lamps performance has been evidenced. Particularly, the methodology proposed in [8,13] makes use of a square-shape current waveform for the parametric study of DBDs. By means of the lamp current waveform (i D B D ), the lamp power can be controlled with three degrees of freedom (DOFs): duty cycle (D), current intensity (I) and frequency (f ) of the current pulses, as shown in Fig.…”