Production of Atmospheric-Pressure Glow Discharge

Abstract

Atmospheric-pressure glow (APG) discharge is one of the more interesting fields of recent study owing to its possible applications in plasma processing, surface treatment, sterilization, etc. This field was developed by Okazaki and Kogoma et al. of the Sophia University group in 1988, and has spread world wide. Usually, a glow discharge is difficult to keep stable at atmospheric gas pressure because glow-to-arc transition occurs due to thermalization of the plasma. However, some methods have been presented to produce stable glow plasma at atmospheric gas pressure; 1) inserting a dielectric plate between electrodes, 2) applying pulsed voltage having a pulse width shorter than the thermalization time, 3) use of a micro-hollow cathode configuration, etc. This article describes the generation of AGP mainly using the dielectric plate. Numerical analysis based on continuity equations of charged species and Poisson's equation is also described.