The characteristics of the starting potential of barrier discharge

Summary form only given, as follows. The authors are researching the decomposition of CO/sub x/, NO/sub x/ and SO/sub x/ gases, whose gases induce the green house effect and acid rain, by using barrier discharge. In this work, we measured the starting potential of a barrier discharge to clarify the mechanism of it as a plasma processes for removing TO/sub x/ gases mentioned above. The experiments were proceeded with changing the electrode gap, thickness of dielectric substrate and discharge gap in barrier discharge in atmospheric pressure. The thickness of the dielectric substrate was changed by piling up the cover glass 0.15 mm thick. These experiments were done in N/sub 2/, CH/sub 4/, CO/sub 2/ and N/sub 2/+NO gases. The power source was alternate current of about 5 kHz. The starting potential of discharge increased in the liner relation with increasing discharge gap and the thickness of dielectric substrate. The electric field of discharge gap was calculated from the electrical potential between gaps divided by the discharge gap. The electric field of discharge gap decreased with increasing the discharge gap. However, this electric field was constant in case that discharge gap was the same. The starting potential of discharge was the highest in CO/sub 2/, and became lower the order of CH/sub 4/, N/sub 2/, and N/sub 2/+NO. The potential of cathode fall for CO/sub 2/ is about twice it for N/sub 2/. The ionization potential for each gas is much the same in 13-15 eV except NO. It is reasonable that the starting potential of CO/sub 2/ is the highest and it of N/sub 2/+NO is the lowest. The starting potential of discharge increased in the linear relation with increasing discharge gap and the thickness of dielectric substrate. The electric field in the discharge gap decreased with increased discharge gap. And the gradient of decrease became gentle gradually.