High-voltage high-frequency arbitrary waveform multilevel generator for dielectric barrier discharge

A high-voltage high-frequency arbitrary waveform voltage generator able to supply a wide range of plasma reactors is proposed in this paper. The generator structure is based on the cascaded H-bridge multilevel topology, including 24 H-bridge basic modules with the capability of 49 output voltage levels. The individual H-bridge dc supply (600V) is provided by a flyback converter fed by a low-voltage (12V) dc battery. In this way, the input isolation of the ±15kV maximum output voltage is realized in a simple and effective manner, and a portable device is obtained. The generator has been tested by supplying a DBD plasma actuator with different voltage waveforms, up to 20 kHz, pointing out a wide and interesting set of results in terms of output plasma currents.