Study of an argon dielectric barrier discharge reactor with atmospheric pressure for material treatment

In this study, effects of the variation in the dielectric barrier discharge’s (DBD) gap distance and the nature of dielectric layers which cover both of the reactor electrodes on the electron density, mass fraction of excited argon atoms across the discharge gap, mean electron energy, ion and electron current density, and electron temperature are investigated at atmospheric pressure. In order to find the optimal reactor gap, the DBD’s average power consumption is studied. The achievements show that when the value of dielectric constant is increased from 7.6 to 10, discharge gap of 1 mm still demonstrates the maximum power consumption, which can be considered as the optimum discharge gap. To optimize the characteristics of one-dimensional modeling of DBD system for material treatment, various types of materials with different values of the permittivity [aluminum, glass (quartz) and silicon] are embedded in the discharge gap between the two electrodes. In this case, the reactor gap is changed from 0.5 mm to 2 mm, while the dielectric constant of the dielectric layers which cover both of the metallic electrodes is assumed to be 10. Compared to the other examined materials, our numerical results illustrate that the treated material with higher value of the relative permittivity (silicon) has greater influences on the variations in the electron density, argon ion density and also total plasma current density than in the values of excited argon atom density, mass fraction of excited argon atoms and also average power consumption.