Study on atmospheric-pressure diffuse discharge with a double-pins-to-plane gap in repetitive modes

Summary form only given. Nanosecond pulsed generator can generate large-area homogeneous and low temperature plasmas at atmospheric pressure, which has attracted much attention¹, ². In this paper, a home made repetitive nanosecond-pulse generator, which is based on magnetic compression system, is used to produce diffuse discharges in a double-pins-to-plane gap. The output voltage has a rise time of ~70 ns and a full width at half maximum of ~100 ns. The characteristics of diffuse discharge are investigated by measuring the voltage-current waveforms and taking the discharge images. The experimental results show that a proper distance between the double pins for a better performance of the diffuse discharge is 8 mm. The diffuse discharge will transit to corona or spark mode with increasing or decreasing the amplitude of applied voltage in atmospheric-pressure air. Furthermore, the conduction current, the instantaneous power and the energy per pulse are calculated. The corresponding results show that the conduction current behaves unipolar and current amplitude is larger than the displacement current. The instantaneous power could reach tens of kilowalts. In addition, the pulse energy per pulse ranges from 2.34 to 4.45mJ in the experiments.