High frequency glow discharges at atmospheric pressure with micro-structured electrode arrays

Micro-structured electrode (MSE) arrays allow the generation of large-area uniform glow discharges over a wide pressure range up to atmospheric pressure. The electrode widths, thicknesses and distances in the micrometre range are realized by means of modern micro-machining and galvanic techniques. The electrode distance, the gap width d, is small enough to generate sufficiently high electric field strengths to ignite gas discharges by applying only moderate radio frequency (RF, 13.56 MHz) voltages (80-390 V in Ne, He, Ar, N-2 and air). The non-thermal plasma system is characterized by a special probe measuring the electric parameters. We tested MSE arrays with d = 70, 25 and 15 mu m. The MSE driven plasmas show a different behaviour from conventional RF discharge plasmas. Due to the very small electrode gap width we can describe the behaviour of the charged particles in the RF field of our system with the dc Townsend breakdown theory, depending on the pressure range and gas. With decreasing pressure, the gas discharges, especially in Ne and He, are increasingly dominated by field electron emission. With the MSE arrays as plasma sources several applications were developed and successfully tested, e.g. decomposition of waste gases and sterilization of food packaging materials at atmospheric pressure.