Simulation of prebreakdown phenomena at a gas/solid interface in a 10% SF/sub 6//N/sub 2/ mixture stressed by very fast transient voltages

A two dimensional Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulation of streamer propagation at a gas/solid interface is carried out for an inhomogeneous gap configuration. A Monte Carlo Collision module (MCC) is introduced into the usual PIC scheme to simulate the elastic, exciting, ionizing and attaching collisions between electrons and neutral gas molecules or the insulating surface. Photoionization phenomena are also considered using a probabilistic scheme.