Effects of pulsed-excitation applied voltage rise time on argon metastable production efficiency in a high pressure dielectric barrier discharge

The authors have quantified the effect of pressure scaling on Ar metastable production efficiency in a dielectric barrier discharge with and without dielectric component losses. Estimates of the volume averaged deposited energy were performed for both short or long rise time voltage pulses, using the same total applied voltages of similar to 10 and similar to 150 ns, respectively. The metastable production efficiencies of long-pulse discharge exhibit smaller decrease over the 100-500 Torr pressure range, compared to those of the short-pulse one to the extent that the efficiency values and scaling for both cases are essentially the same within the experimental uncertainty. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.