Excitation of atmospheric pressure uniform dielectric barrier discharge using repetitive unipolar nanosecond-pulse generator

Abstract

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) excitation by unipolar high voltage pulses is apromising approach for producing non-thermal plasma at atmospheric pressure. In this study, a magnetic compression solid-state pulsed power generator was used to produce repetitive nanosecond pulses for the excitation. The DBD is created using two liquid electrodes. The electrical characteristics of the discharge voltage and current are illustrated under different experimental conditions. The nanosecond-pulse discharge current is of the order of tens of amperes. This differs from common DBD current excitated by high-voltage ac sources. Compared with the characteristics of two current pulses corresponding to two discharges for unipolar pulsed-excitation, the secondary discharge in this study is minor owing to the pulsed power and discharge configuration. Under the experimental conditions, the luminous emissions from the front and side views of the liquid electrodes show that no filament is observed and the discharge is homogeneous and diffuse in the whole discharge region. The effects of applied voltage amplitude, repetition rate, and air gap spacing on the discharge characteristic are investigated. The discharge mode does not change with the variation of the investigated parameters. A comparison of high voltage ac and nanosecond-pulse excitation is also presented. In addition, discussion of the experimental results is presented. Index Terms-Gas discharge; dielectric barrier discharge; pulsed power; nanosecond pulse; magnetic compression; repetition rate; atmospheric pressure air; non-thermal plasma; discharge mode; homogeneous discharge; atmospheric pressure glow discharge.

Study on double resonant performance of air-core spiral tesla transformer applied in repetitive pulsed operation

“…And the time for u 2 to reach (u 2 ) max is about 40 μs. Some applications may be limited by the bipolar output or the long peak time [4][5][6]. Therefore, the output pulses should be compressed to unipolar with fast rise-time for improvement.…”

“…THE rapidly developing pulsed power technology and high-voltage pulsed generators have been widely applied in many fields such as electron beam accelerators, gas discharge plasma, ultra bandwidth (UWB) systems, dielectric material researches, etc [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Traditional pulse generators cannot meet the requirements of high voltage, high repetition rate and fast rise-time any more [8].The development of high performance pulsed power generators has become a hot spot in the field of pulsed power technology [12,13].…”

Atmospheric air diffuse array-needles dielectric barrier discharge excited by positive, negative, and bipolar nanosecond pulses in large electrode gap

“…18,19 Shao et al got a diffuse discharge in unipolar NPDBD using electrode of small curvature radius and liquid electrodes, respectively. [20][21][22] NPDBD combines the virtues of NHVPD and DBD, so it can obtain diffuse discharge plasma at AP easily and has good restraint on GAT. 8,10,11 Most of the nanosecond pulsed discharges are driven by unipolar pulse, in which uniform plasma can be easily got under low power consumption at AP.…”

A microsecond generator based on pulse transformer and its discharge applications

“…However, the voltage amplitude of pulsed power generator can reach 100 kV or more, with high instantaneous power (MW) and low average power (kW). Studies have shown that pulsed discharge plasma at atmospheric pressure has many advantages [4][5][6][7]. Burlica et al used low-temperature plasma produced by sliding arc discharge to treat water, which could produce hydrogen peroxide.…”

“…Three different excitation sources (DC-, AC-and pulse-source) are compared for the generation efficiency of hydrogen peroxide, it was found that ac excitation was more efficiency than DC excitation, and pulse excitation was optimal [5]. Shao et al compared high frequency high voltage dielectric barrier discharge and unipolar nanosecond pulsed dielectric barrier discharge to produce low-temperature plasma at atmospheric pressure, and concluded that pulsed discharge was more favorable for the discharge uniformity [6]. Yang et al used uniform air dielectric barrier discharge for surface treatment of non-woven polypropylene, and the modification effect of AC power and pulsed power were compared.…”