A two-dimensional hybrid simulation for micro dielectric barrier discharges operated in atmospheric pressure

A plasma display panel cell is one example of micro dielectric barrier discharges operated in near atmospheric pressure. It is difficult to measure the phenomena experimentally in such a small discharge at atmospheric pressure. In most cases, atmospheric pressure discharges are simulated with a fluid model using drift-diffusion approximation and local field approximation. However, it was proved in our research that the drift-diffusion approximation is not applicable to heavy ions even at a high pressure. Especially, Xe ion motion is overestimated in the fluid code. In order to investigate the discharge characteristics and analyze the effects of cell size and Xe-content of more than 10%, a hybrid model has been developed which adopts a fluid model for electrons and a particle-in-cell (PIC) model for ions. Using the hybrid code, the discharge characteristics are investigated with the diagnostics for the electric field intensity, charged and excited particles distributions, energy and angle distributions of the ions at the boundary. Conventional diagnostics for a light device are also included such as luminance, power consumption, and luminous efficacy .We compared the result with experiment to confirm adequacy of the simulation.