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A method to determine excitation temperatures based on the optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and Fermi-Dirac distribution was set up, and the temperatures of pure-argon and mixed-gases at different pressures were investigated. In this way we set up a standard process to get the excitation temperatures of plasmas operated at atmospheric and sub-atmospheric pressures.

Usually, the electrical breakdown of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) at atmospheric pressure leads to a filamentary non-homogeneous discharge. However, it is also possible to obtain a diffuse DBD in homogeneous form, called atmospheric pressure glow discharge (APGD). We obtained a uniform APGD in helium and in the mixture of argon with alcohol, and studied the electrical characteristics of helium APGD. It is found that the relationship between discharge current and source frequency is different depending on the difference in gas gap when the applied voltage is kept constant. The discharge current shows an increasing trend with the increased frequency when gas gap is 0.8 cm, but the discharge current tends to decrease with the increased frequency when the gas gap increases. The discharge current always increases with the increased applied voltage when the source frequency is kept constant. We also observed a glow-like discharge in nitrogen at atmospheric pressure.

The plasma characteristics have been investigated in situ by using optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and the Langmuir probe during hot cathode direct current discharge plasma chemical vapor deposition of diamond films. The changes of atomic H and CH radical in the ground state have been calculated quantitatively according to the results of OES and the Langmuir probe measurement as discharge current density varied. It is shown that atomic H and CH radicals both in the ground state and in the excited state increase with the enhancement of the discharge current density in the plasma. The electron density and CH emission intensity increase linearly with the enhancement of discharge current densities. The generation of different carbon-containing radicals is related to the elevation of electron temperature. Combining the growth process of diamond films and the diagnostic results, it is shown that atomic H in the excited state may improve the diamond growth efficiently, and the increase of electron temperature and density plays an important role in the increase of the deposition rate of diamond films.

Atmospheric pressure surface discharge is shown to have great prospects for a number of industrial applications. To acquire better results in application fields and considering that the study of the basic parameters including electron temperature and electron density is desirable, we develop an equivalent circuit model and the diagnostic techniques based on optical emission spectroscopy and electrical measurement in our laboratory. The electron temperature has been determined to be about 0.7 eV by a Fermi–Dirac model. The electron density has been calculated to be near 1010cm−3 from a time resolved electrical measurement (Ohmic heating method).