Effects of O2 addition on the plasma uniformity and reactivity of Ar DBD excited by ns pulsed and AC power supplies

Abstract Dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs) have been widely used in ozone synthesis, materials surface treatment, and plasma medicine for their advantages of uniform discharge and high plasma-chemical reactivity. To improve the reactivity of DBDs, in this work, the O 2 is added into Ar nanosecond (ns) pulsed and AC DBDs. The uniformity and discharge characteristics of Ar ns pulsed and AC DBDs with different O 2 contents are investigated with optical and electrical diagnosis methods. The DBD uniformity is quantitatively analyzed by gray value standard deviation method. The electrical parameters are extracted from voltage and current waveforms separation to characterize the discharge processes and calculate electron density n e . The optical emission spectroscopy is measured to show the plasma reactivity and calculate the trend of electron temperature T e with the ratio of two emission lines. It is found that the ns pulsed DBD has a much better uniformity than AC DBD for the fast rising and falling time. With the addition of O 2 , the uniformity of ns pulsed DBD gets worse for the space electric field distortion by O 2 − , which promotes the filamentary formation. While, in AC DBD, the added O 2 can reduce the intensity of filaments, which enhances the discharge uniformity. The ns pulsed DBD has a much higher instantaneous power and energy efficiency than AC DBD. The ratio of Ar emission intensities indicates that the T e drops quickly with the addition of O 2 both ns pulsed and AC DBDs and the ns pulsed DBD has an obvious higher T e and n e than AC DBD. The results are helpful for the realization of the reactive and uniform low temperature plasma sources.