Issue Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. Volume 47, Number 2, August 2009 11th International Symposium on High Pressure, Low Temperature Plasma Chemistry (HAKONE XI) Article Number 22810 Number of page(s) 6 Section 11th International Symposium on High Pressure, Low Temperature Plasma Chemistry (HAKONE XI) DOI 10.1051/epjap/2009078 Published online 28 April 2009

Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 47, 22810 (2009)
DOI: 10.1051/epjap/2009078

Influence of surface charges on the structure of a dielectric barrier discharge in air at atmospheric pressure: experiment and modeling

S. Celestin^{1, 2}, Z. Bonaventura¹, O. Guaitella², A. Rousseau² and A. Bourdon<sup>1

1</sup>  École Centrale Paris, EM2C Laboratory, CNRS UPR 288, Grande voie des vignes, 92295 Châtenay-Malabry Cedex, France
²  École Polytechnique, LPP Laboratory, CNRS UMR 7648, Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France

sebastien.celestin@em2c.ecp.fr

Received: 11 January 2009 / Accepted: 2 February 2009 / Published online: 28 April 2009

Abstract
Dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) in air at atmospheric pressure and at low frequency are mainly constituted of thin transient plasma filaments (or microdischarges) with radii of a few hundreds of micrometers. In this work, we consider a point-to-plane geometry with the dielectric covering the plane electrode. Plasma filaments are initiated by streamers, starting from the high-field region close to the point electrode. The plasma filaments deposit charges on the dielectric plate which screen the electric field and lead to an extinction of the discharge filaments. In this work we experimentally demonstrate the synchronous start of several filaments in a time range of less than a few tens of nanoseconds and we show that the charges deposited on the dielectric have a strong impact on the discharge structure. This is validated using a simple electrostatic model. Then, the dynamics of the 2D streamer propagation in the gas gap and its interaction with the dielectric plane is calculated. The influence of space charges and surface charges on the discharge structure are discussed and compared with the experiment.

PACS
52.80.-s - Electric discharges.
52.80.Hc - Glow; corona.
51.50+v - Electrical properties (ionization, breakdown, electron and ion mobility, etc.).
52.65.-y - Plasma simulation .

© EDP Sciences 2009

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