Temporally, spatially, and spectrally resolved barrier discharge produced in trapped helium gas at atmospheric pressure

Experimental study was made on induced effects by trapped helium gas in the pulsed positive dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) operating in symmetrical electrode configuration at atmospheric pressure. Using fast photography technique and electrical measurements, the differences in the discharge regimes between the stationary and the flowing helium are investigated. It was shown experimentally that the trapped gas atmosphere (TGA) has notable impact on the barrier discharge regime compared with the influence of the flowing gas atmosphere. According to our experimental results, the DBD discharge produced in trapped helium gas can be categorized as a multi-glow (pseudo-glow) discharge, each discharge working in the sub-normal glow regime. This conclusion is made by considering the duration of current pulse (few mu s), their maximum values (tens of mA), the presence of negative slope on the voltage-current characteristic, and the spatio-temporal evolution of the most representative excited species in the discharge gap. The paper focuses on the space-time distribution of the active species with a view to better understand the pseudo-glow discharge mechanism. The physical basis for these effects was suggested. A transition to filamentary discharge is suppressed in TGA mode due to the formation of supplementary source of seed electrons by surface processes (by desorption of electrons due to vibrationally excited nitrogen molecules, originated from barriers surfaces) rather than volume processes (by enhanced Penning ionisation). Finally, we show that the pseudo-glow discharge can be generated by working gas trapping only; maintaining unchanged all the electrical and constructive parameters. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.