Discharge physics and influence of the modulation on helium DBD modes in the medium-frequency range at atmospheric pressure

In this paper the recently reported hybrid mode (a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) excited by an electric field oscillating at about 1 MHz) is investigated using space and time-resolved imaging together with electrical measurements. In contrast with the helium low-frequency DBD, at 1.6 MHz the light emission is desynchronized with the discharge current. It rather depends on the enhanced rate of stepwise excitation resulting from the massive secondary emission occurring 0.15Ƭ after the discharge current maximum (Ƭ is the excitation wave period). The consequence of ion impacts on the dielectric surfaces is a higher gas and dielectric temperatures as compared to typical helium DBDs. The electrical behavior and the gas temperature of a pulsed dielectric-barrier discharge operated at 1.6 MHz are also described in this paper as a function of the repetition rate (varying from 1 Hz to 10 kHz). The gas temperature is reduced when repetition rates higher or equal to 10 Hz is used. This is related to the gas renewal rate of 8.3 Hz, i.e., gas residence time of 120 ms in our conditions. In addition, due to the memory effect in the gas, the gas gap voltage decreases as the repetition rate increases. However, beyond 100 Hz, the power decreases and the gas gap voltage increases again. As a consequence, for a given power density, the optimal repetition rate is 100 Hz which minimizes the gas temperature without reducing the power density