Design of a novel microwave plasma source based on ridged waveguide

—The tapered waveguide as a microwave plasma excitation structure is widely used in the industrial field. However, it needs high input microwave power to ignite and sustain plasma because its electric field is not sufficiently focused in the discharge area. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel microwave plasma source based on a ridged waveguide. The structure of the proposed microwave plasma source is optimized to focus the electric field in the discharge region by electromagnetic calculations before the plasma excitation. Then, the equivalent circuit model is used to analyze the impedance matching characteristics of the novel device after the plasma excitation. In order to validate this device, a microwave plasma system is built to measure the plasma exciting power and sustaining power in both air and argon at atmospheric pressure. The simulation and experiment are carried out in both tapered waveguide and the proposed device. Simulation results show the electric field of the ridged waveguide is 1.9 times of that of the tapered waveguide when the input power is 1500 W. Moreover, in the experiments, the exciting power and sustaining power of the air and argon plasma in the novel device are lower than those of the tapered waveguide at different gas flow rates. © 2021, Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.