Experimental Generation Of A Steady-state Glow Discharge At Atmospheric Pressure

Summary form only given, as follows. In industrial plasma engineering, a steady-state atmospheric glow discharge would allow many surface modification and other plasma processing operations to be carried out under atmospheric conditions, rather than in expensive vacuum systems which enforce batch processing. In this paper, we report some encouraging results of an experimental program conceived independently of the work reported by Kanda, et al. (Ref 1). Our experiments were conducted on an experimental apparatus shown schematically in Figure 1. A Parallel Plate plasma reactor with square electrodes 25 cm on a side, covered with an insulating surface (rubber or glass), and with variable spacing, was set up in an enclosed box which made it possible to control the type of working gas used. This reactor was energized by a very specialized RF power supply capable of supplying up to 5 kilowatts of RF power at rms voltages up to 5 kilovolts, and over a frequency range from 1kHz to 100 kHz.