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The paper presents the results of a numerical simulation of the effects of N2 on the characteristics of Trichel pulses in SF6 at 0.4 MPa. The simulation was performed in a 2D axisymmetric geometry assuming a three species discharge model for the applied voltage on the discharge electrode to be −25 kV. Three drift-diffusion equations coupled with Poisson's equation are considered to determine the dynamic behavior of Trichel pulses and the temporal and spatial distributions of charged species. The reduced ionization coefficient, the reduced attachment coefficient, the electron mobility, and the electron diffusion coefficient of SF6/N2 mixtures are obtained by solving the two-term Boltzmann equations. The content of N2 varies from 20% to 80%. The distribution of three charged species and the reduced electric field at the discharge tip are presented at different instants of time to explain the formation mechanism of the Trichel pulses in SF6/N2 mixtures. The time-dependent current, the total number of electrons, the positive ions, and the negative ions as well as the reduced electric field at the discharge tip under different SF6/N2 mixtures are analyzed to investigate the sensitivities of these properties to the N2 content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cold atmospheric plasmas are reportedly capable of enhancing the percutaneous absorption of drugs, which is a development direction of plasma medicine. This motivated us to study how the enhancement effect was realized. In this letter, gelatin gel films were used as surrogates of human tissues, NaNO2 was used as a representative of small-molecule drugs, and cross-field and linear-field plasma jets were used for the purpose of enhancing the penetration of NaNO2 through the gelatin gel films. The permeability of gelatin gel films was quantified by measuring the NO2– concentration in water which was covered by those films. It was found that the gas flow and electric field of cold plasmas played a crucial role in the permeability enhancement of the model tissues, but the effect of gas flow was mainly confined in the surface layer, while the effect of the electric field was holistic. Those effects might be attributed to the localized squeezing of particles by gas flow and the weakening of the ion-dipole interaction by the AC electric field. The enhancement effect decreases with the increasing mass fraction of gelatin because the macromolecules of gelatin could significantly hinder the penetration of small molecules in the model tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the formation and propagation of plasma plume for atmospheric pressure plasmas have been intensively studied, how does the plasma plume terminate is still little known. In this letter, helium plasma plumes are generated in a long quartz tube by pulsed voltages and a constant gas flow. The voltages have a variable pulse width (PW) from 0.5μs to 200μs. It is found that the plasma plume terminates right after the falling edge of each voltage pulse when PW<20μs, whereas it terminates before the falling edge. When PW is larger than 30 μs, the duration of plasma plume starts to decrease, and the termination is found to occur at the current zero moment of the discharge current through the high-voltage electrode, which is much different from that through the ground electrode. This indicates that part of the discharge current is shunted by the plasma plume to its downstream gas region. An equivalent circuit model is developed, from which the surface charge deposited on the quartz tube is found crucial for accelerating the termination of a plasma plume when PW>30μs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A surface micro-discharge in atmospheric pressure He + N2 mixtures is studied in this paper with an emphasis on the discharge modes. With the N2 admixture increasing from 0.1% to 20%, the discharge evolves from a spatially diffuse mode to a filamentary mode during positive half-cycles of the applied voltage. However during the negative half-cycles, an additional patterned mode emerges between the diffuse and the filamentary modes, which has not been reported before to exist in surface micro-discharges. In the diffuse and patterned modes, the plasmas cover almost the entirety of the mesh area during one cycle after plasma ignition in all mesh elements, and the discharge power increases linearly with the applied voltage. In contrast, plasma coverage of the mesh area is only partial in the filamentary mode and the plasma is more unstable with the discharge power increasing exponentially with the applied voltage. As the surface micro-discharge evolves through the three modes, the density of excited species changes significantly, for instance, the density of N2+(B) drops by ∼20-fold from [N2] = 0.2% to 20%. The N2+(B) is predicted to be generated mainly through successive processes of Penning ionization by helium metastables and electron-impact excitation of N2+(X), the latter is most responsible for the density decrease of N2+(B) because much more N2+(X) is converted to N4+(X) as the increase of N2 fraction. Also, the electron density and electron temperature decrease with the discharge mode transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitric oxide NO is one of the major targets for environmental monitoring, but the existing NO sensors are limited by their low sensitivity and narrow test range. Here, a NO gas sensor employing multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) was fabricated, and its properties in NO-N2 mixture were investigated from both emission and ionization. The current I e passing through the nanotubes cathode was found to decrease with increasing NO concentration and increase linearly in different slopes with the extracting voltage U e. It is shown that the Schottky barrier of the MWCNTs calculated by I e increased with NO concentration due to the adsorption of NO gas, which restrained the electron emission and consequently weakened the ionization. The positive ion currents I c passing through the collecting electrode at different voltages of U e were found to monotonically decrease with increasing NO concentration, which was induced by both of the reduced electron emission and the consumption of the two excited metastable states N2(A³u +) and N2(a'¹u -) by NO. The sensor exhibited high sensitivity at the low temperature of 30 °C. The calculated conductivity was found to be able to take place of Ic for NO detection in a wide voltage range of 80-150 V U e. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present in this paper how oxygen additive impacts on the cold atmospheric-pressure helium plasmas by means of a one-dimensional fluid model. For the oxygen concentration [O2] > -0.1%, the influence of oxygen on the electron characteristics and the power dissipation becomes important, e.g., the electron density, the electron temperature in sheath, the electron-coupling power, and the sheath width decreasing by 1.6 to 16 folds with a two-log increase in [O2] from 0.1% to 10%. Also the discharge mode evolves from the y mode to the a mode. The reactive oxygen species are found to peak in the narrow range of [O2] = 0.4%-0.9% in the plasmas, similar to their power-coupling values. This applies to their wall fluxes except for those of O* and O2". These two species have very short lifetimes, thus only when generated in boundary layers within several micrometers next to the electrode can contribute to the fluxes. The dominant reactive oxygen species and the corresponding main reactions are schematically presented, and their relations are quantified for selected applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge in helium is a pulsed discharge in nature and the moment of maximum species densities is almost consistent with peak discharge current density. In this paper, a one-dimensional fluid model is used to investigate the temporal structure of plasma species in an atmospheric He-N2 dielectric barrier discharge (DBD). It is demonstrated that there exist microsecond delays of the moments of the maximum electron and ion densities from the peak of discharge current density. These time delays are caused by a competition between the electron impact and Penning ionizations, modulated by the N2 level in the plasma-forming gas. Besides, significant electron wall losses lead to the DBD being more positively charged and, with a distinct temporal separation in the peak electron and cation densities, the plasma is characterized with repetitive bursts of net positive charges. The temporal details of ionic and reactive plasma species may provide a new idea for some biological processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, much attention has been paid to SF6-CO2 mixtures as one of substitutes for pure SF6 gas. In this paper, the dielectric breakdown properties of hot SF6-CO2 mixtures are investigated at temperatures of 300-3500K and pressures of 0.01-1.0 MPa. Under the assumptions of local thermodynamic equilibrium and local chemical equilibrium, the equilibrium compositions of hot SF6-CO2 mixtures with different CO2 proportions are obtained based on Gibbs free energy minimization. The cross sections for interactions between electrons and neutral species are presented. Some unknown ionization cross sections are determined theoretically using Deutsch-Märk (DM) formalism based on quantum chemistry. Two-term Boltzmann equation is adopted to calculate the electron energy distribution function, reduced ionization coefficient, reduced attachment coefficient, and reduced effective ionization coefficient. Then the reduced critical electric field strength of mixtures, corresponding to dielectric breakdown performances, is determined when the generation and loss of electrons are balanced. Finally, the influences of temperature, pressure, and CO2 proportion on the reduced critical electric field strength are studied. It is found that a large percentage of CO2 can obviously reduce concentrations of high-energy electrons. At temperatures above 1750 K, an addition of CO2 to SF6 gas can enhance dielectric breakdown performances. However, at low temperatures, too much CO2 added into mixtures can reduce dielectric breakdown abilities. In addition, increasing gas pressure can improve dielectric breakdown performances. But the influence will be no more significant if pressure is over 0.8 MPa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]