Sub-microsecond pulsed glow discharges in atmospheric helium and argon at room temperature

Summary form only given. Stable atmospheric discharges in helium, argon, and nitrogen have been demonstrated, typically with sinusoidal excitation, over a wide range of the parametric space. For treatment of thermally labile materials such as polymers and human-skin, the gas temperature of sinusoidally sustained atmospheric plasmas, particularly in argon and nitrogen, tends to be slightly too large and this restricts a full exploration of their parametric space. Recently, the use of pulsed excitation has been studied. This contribution presents data of an experimental study of atmospheric helium and argon plasmas generated and sustained with sub-microsecond pulses. It is shown that the pulsed excitation has three distinct advantages -namely (1) near room temperature; (2) very low averaged power; (3) production of high fluxes of reactive plasma species.