Time evolution of discharge current and light intensity in a PDP with Ne-H₂ gas mixtures

¹ National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Bucharest, Romania
² Centre de Physique des Plasmas et Applications, Université Paul Sabatier, 31062 Toulouse Cedex, France

Corresponding author: catalinaciobotaru@yahoo.com

Received: 2 July 2004
Revised: 17 August 2004
Accepted: 23 September 2004
Published online: 23 November 2004

Abstract

In previously published papers [G. Musa et al., Rom. Rep. Phys. 49, 195 (1997); G. Musa et al., Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 4, 165 (1998)] we reported a drastic change of time evolution of the barrier discharge current at the addition of hydrogen to neon–filling gas of the discharge device. Both, discharge current and discharge emitted light durations increase at least five times. We established that the main explanation of the above mentioned behavior consists in the negative-positive ion recombination, process which has one of the largest known cross–section [M.A. Lieberman and A.J. Lichtenberg, Principles of plasma discharges and material processing (John Wiley & Sons, N.Y., 1994)]. The first condition to have negative-positive ions recombination is to use as filling gas of the discharge device an electronegative–electropositive gas mixture [G. Musa et al., ESCAMPIG-16, Grenoble France, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 29; G. Musa et al., J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 18, 2119 (1985); A. Baltog et al., Contrib. Plasma Phys. 40, 537 (2000); G. Musa and A. Baltog, Contrib. Plasma Phys. 43, 210 (2003)]. Additional conditions must be fulfilled in order to ensure enough density of negative ions necessary for such a recombination process. An increased “consumption” of electrons is necessary to produce needed negative ions. Consequently, the wall polarization process is slowing down with subsequent increase of the light emission and discharge current duration. Possible use of this increase of light emission at electronegative gas addition to the filling gas neon as a mean to increase the discharge light generation efficiency is considered.