Run-to-run variations, asymmetric pulses, and long time-scale transient phenomena in dielectric-barrier atmospheric pressure glow discharges

Abstract

The dielectric-barrier (DB) discharge is an important approach to generate uniform non-equilibrium atmospheric-pressure glow discharges. We report run-to-run variations, asymmetric pulse formation and long time-scale transient phenomena in these discharges. For similar DB discharge geometric and operating conditions, we observe significant run-to-run variations as manifested in the different voltage–current waveforms at the start of each new run. These run-to-run variations are also accompanied by asymmetric pulses at the start of each run. The variations are observed to drift to a repeatable true steady-state condition on time scales of order tens of minutes to hours. Asymmetric pulse waveforms drift to a symmetric pulse waveform at the true steady state. We explore reasons for these phenomena and rule out thermal drift during a discharge run and gas-phase impurity buildup as potential causes. The most plausible explanation appears to be variations in the surface characteristics of the DBs between two consecutive runs owing to varying inter-run environmental exposure and the conditioning of the dielectric surface during a run owing to plasma–surface interactions. We speculate that the dielectric surface state affects the secondary electron emission coefficient of the surface which in turn is manifested in the discharge properties. A zero-dimensional model of the discharge is used to explore the effect of secondary electron emission.