On the spatio-temporal development of pulsed barrier discharges

There is an increasing interest in atmospheric pressure discharges for technological applications. Due to their low gas temperature, high electron energy and the presence of active species these discharges have a high potential for plasma chemistry e.g. for ozone production as well as gas and water purification¹. Besides corona discharges and micro hollow cathode discharges, dielectric barrier discharges are often used in this field of application. Here, sinusoidal driven ones are basically used in practice. In last years however, there are applications where pulsed driven discharges show a better efficiency in plasma-chemical application (e.g. ozone generation²) than sinusoidal driven ones. This finding forces systematic studies in this matter.