High pressure hollow electrode discharges

Summary form only given. Reduction of the cathode hole diameter into the submillimeter range has allowed us to extend the pressure range for hollow electrode discharge operation to values on the order of 50 Torr. In recent experiments with cathode holes of 0.2 mm diameter we obtained stable glow discharge operation up to approximately 900 Torr in argon. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of these discharges (with currents ranging from the ten´s of /spl mu/A to ten mA) show three distinct discharge modes: at low current, a discharge with positive differential resistivity, followed by a range with strong increase in current and reduction in voltage, and, at high current, again a resistive discharge mode. The resistive characteristic of high pressure hollow electrode discharges over a large range of current allows us to generate arrays of these discharges for use as flat panel, direct current, excimer lamps.