Simplified High-Voltage Short-Pulse Power Modulator for DBD Plasma Application

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD)-based plasma reactor and lamp are widely used for the growing areas of medical science, bacterial disinfection, pollution control, surface treatment, and so on. In this article, a simplified high-frequency, high-voltage short-pulse power modulator (HV-SPPM) is proposed for DBD plasma sources that are effectively capacitive loads. An energy discharge circuit (EDC) has been devised in the HV-SPPM to terminate the high-voltage pulses increase indefinitely for a capacitive load, which causes damage to the pulse power modulator. The HV-SPPM is using a wide bandgap (WBG) device without having a dissipative snubber circuit on primary side and magnetic compression circuit. The performance of the HV-SPPM has been validated experimentally by using a suitable DBD plasma-UV load. In the proposed HV-SPPM, a series diode with resistor has been introduced across the DBD plasma-UV lamp to damp out the sinusoidal oscillations between DBD capacitance and leakage inductance of the transformer. The HV-SPPM is capable to generate negative voltage pulses up to 6 kV and pulse width 800 ns with frequency variation up to 50 kHz. The proposed arrangement makes the HV-SPPM more compact, lightweight, simple, and highly efficient with very short rise and fall times voltage pulses suitable for the DBD plasma applications.