Industrial applications of the one atmosphere uniform glow discharge plasma

Summary form only given. Over the past six years, we have developed at the UTK Plasma Sciences Laboratory a proprietary (to the UT Research Corporation) and patented technology for generating a one atmosphere uniform glow discharge plasma (OAUGDP), and also for industrial plasma processing applications of this discharge. A OAUGDP in air efficiently generates plasma active species, including ozone and atomic oxygen, without the requirement of a vacuum system or batch processing. The OAUGDP operates in a frequency band determined by the ion trapping mechanism provided that, for air, the electric field is above about 8.5 kV/cm. For proper values of gap distance, RF driving frequency, and rms voltage, the OAUGDP produces a uniform plasma without avalanches, streamers, or filamentary microdischarges. In the OAUGDP, the plasma characteristics, including the electron energy and density, are functions of time. This time dependence has been studied experimentally and by computer modeling for an atmospheric helium plasma.