The Secondary Ionization Wave and Characteristic Map of Surface Discharge Plasma in a Wide Time Scale

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation of secondary ionization waves in surface discharge plasma across a wide range of time scales, providing a characteristic map to aid in the design of surface discharges.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical and numerical analysis revealing the formation mechanism of secondary ionization waves during voltage rise, and proposes a characteristic map of energy and forces over various time scales.

Findings

Secondary ionization wave forms during voltage rise when electron density drops to a critical level.

A characteristic map of energy and electro-hydrodynamic forces is developed for 1 ns to 0.1 s time scales.

The study advances understanding of surface discharge dynamics and design.

Abstract

Variation of voltage profiles with different time scales leads to the redistribution of deposited energy as well as electro-hydrodynamic forces, while the mechanism and scaling law is still unknown. On the basis of theoretical and numerical analysis, we show that a secondary surface ionization wave forms during the voltage rising slope when electron density decreases to a critical level while the voltage is still rising. A characteristic map of energy and electro-hydrodynamics force in time scales between 1~ns and 0.1~s at atmospheric pressure is proposed, opening the door towards the target--directed design of surface discharges.