Re-breakdown voltage across small gaps in atmospheric air: Investigations over a large time range and at several gap heights

Atmospheric plasma sources are attractive because of several advantages such as low cost, simplicity, ease of operation, etc. In industry, stable plasmas at high pressure (i.e. near-atmospheric) are widely used for surface treatment and modification, for ozone generation, for pollution control, for display panels, etc. However, the dynamics during the electrical breakdown of gases at near-atmospheric conditions is not fully understood yet. One particular phenomenon is the so-called re-breakdown that is sometimes observed after extinction of the previous discharge. Although the time-dependent re-breakdown voltage is essentially known, the knowledge about its behavior immediately after the previous discharge is still not sufficient. In this contribution, we present a simple electronic circuit for evaluation of the re-breakdown voltage after the previous spark in small air gaps. Using the proposed circuit, we accurately determined the re-breakdown voltage for air gaps with heights ranging from 190 μm down to 23μm for times from tens of nanoseconds to several milliseconds.