Energetics of Noble Gas Dielectric Barrier Discharges: Novel Results Related to Electrode Areas and Dielectric Materials

Two dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactors, one small, the other about 40 times larger, associated equipment, and a dedicated MATLAB code have been used to carry out precise determinations of electrical energy, E
_g
, dissipated per discharge cycle of the applied a.c. voltage, Va. In the smaller reactor, this was done over the frequency range 5 f 50 kHz and using twin pairs of several different insulating materials (2.54-cm-diameter disks) with relative permittivities between 2.1 κ'
_die
9.5 as dielectric barriers in DBDs for four different gases: He, Ne, Ar, and N
₂
. In the large reactor, f was restricted to 20 kHz in Ar and He; this latter system primarily serves for plasma polymerization experiments in which organic “monomers” are admixed with the flow of Ar as carrier gas. We report the method for exactly evaluating E
_g
, and then present and compare values measured under different conditions. To the extent possible, these are compared between the small and large reactors, and with results published in the literature. The reliability of the method is confirmed, for example, by reproducing published breakdown fields of the gases examined, and by several other original results.