DC high voltage to drive helium plasma jet comprised of repetitive streamer breakdowns

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel helium atmospheric pressure plasma jet driven by pure DC high voltage, characterized by repetitive streamer breakdowns with tunable frequency based on electrode geometry and gas flow.

Contribution

It introduces a new type of helium plasma jet operating on DC voltage with series of repetitive streamer breakdowns, tunable by electrode configuration.

Findings

Repetitive streamer breakdowns occur at about 13 kHz.

Breakdown frequency is controlled by electrode geometry and gas flow.

The plasma jet operates reliably with auto-oscillations driven by DC high voltage.

Abstract

This paper demonstrates and studies helium atmospheric pressure plasma jet comprised of series of repetitive streamer breakdowns, which is driven by a pure DC high voltage (auto-oscillations). Repetition frequency of the breakdowns is governed by the geometry of discharge electrodes/surroundings and gas flow rate. Each next streamer is initiated when the electric field on the anode tip recovers after the previous breakdown and reaches the breakdown threshold value of about 2.5 kV/cm. Repetition frequency of the streamer breakdowns excited using this principle can be simply tuned by reconfiguring the discharge electrode geometry. This custom-designed type of the helium plasma jet, which operates on the DC high voltage and is comprised of the series of the repetitive streamer breakdowns at frequency about 13 kHz, is demonstrated.