755 / 2022-03-31 20:21:12

Effects of pulse repetition frequency and voltage slew rate on the uniformity of air dielectric barrier discharge

nanosecond pulse; Dielectric barrier discharge; Uniformity; Pulse repetition frequency; Pulse rise time

To obtain uniform atmospheric pressure plasma in air, a nanosecond pulse power supply is used to excite dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) and the effects of pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and voltage slew rate on the discharge uniformity are investigated.


A double layer DBD reactor with indium tin oxide (ITO) glass as grounded electrode is constructed. The discharge uniformity of different PRFs (500 Hz-12 kHz) and voltage slew rates (50 ns-500 ns) is analyzed from the discharge images taken from the ITO glass with the gray analysis method. The corresponding voltage-current waveforms are measured to reveal the effect of the electrical parameters on the discharge uniformity.


The results show that when the PRF is less than 5 kHz, the discharge is uniform. With the PRF increases, the residual charged particles will lead to the deterioration of the electrical field and decrease the uniformity. The rapid voltage slew rate can increase the reduced electric field strength in space, which promotes the electron avalanche merging and increase the discharge uniformity. It is also found that the increase of PRF would lead to the increase of the peak values of the gap voltage and the discharge current first (from 500 Hz to 3 kHz) and then decrease. The increase of voltage slew rate leads the decrease of the peak values of the gap voltage and the discharge current.


The changing of the PRF and voltage slew rate leads to the variation of the reduced electric field strength and space charge, which can be used to monitor the uniformity of air DBD.