Development of a diffuse air-argon plasma source using a dielectric-barrier discharge at atmospheric pressure

A stable diffuse large-volume air plasma source was developed by using argon-induced dielectric-barrier discharges at atmospheric pressure. This plasma source can be operated in a filamentary discharge with the average areal power density of 0.27 W/cm2 and the gas temperature of 315±3 K. Spatial measurement of emission spectrum and temperature indicates that this plasma is uniform in the central region along the transverse direction. It is also found that the formation of diffuse air plasma mainly lies in the creation of sufficient seed electrons by the Penning effect through collisions between two argon or nitrogen metastables at low electric fields.