The Research of Atmospheric Pressure Cold Plasma Jet Generated by Auto-Excited-Pulsed DC Discharge

Abstract

In order to obtain stable cold plasma jet under atmospheric pressure condition, we designed a high-voltage DC power supply based on the principle of multilayer piezoelectric ceramic transformer (MPT). At the same time, we developed a cold plasma jet device that its shape is similar to the gun structure. The total weight of device, including the power supply and the generator, is less than 500 g. In the experiments of argon plasma under atmospheric pressure, current–voltage measurements show that the discharge actually appears periodically pulsed with a frequency of about 30 kHz. The discharge current has a pulse-width that is about 100 ns, while its peak value reaches about 32 mA. The maximum length of the plasma is about 3 cm. The further study showed that the discharge current pulse frequency is determined by the ion drift mechanism.