Simulations of atmospheric pressure discharge in a high-voltage nanosecond pulse using the particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision model in noble gases

Atmospheric pressure discharge nonequilibrium plasmas have been applied to plasma processing with modern technology. Simulations of discharge in pure Ar and pure He gases at one atmospheric pressure by a high voltage trapezoidal nanosecond pulse have been performed using a one-dimensional particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC-MCC) model coupled with a renormalization and weighting procedure (mapping algorithm). Numerical results show that the characteristics of discharge in both inert gases are very similar. There exist the effects of local reverse field and double-peak distributions of charged particles’ density. The electron and ion energy distribution functions are also observed, and the discharge is concluded in the view of ionization avalanche in number. Furthermore, the independence of total current density is a function of time, but not of position.