A novel LC‐based bipolar pulsed power supply for dielectric barrier discharge excimer lamps

Abstract

SummaryAn excitation voltage with a high rising rate, falling rate, and idle time simultaneously is beneficial to taking advantage of the potential of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) loads. However, how to generate this kind of excitation voltage with a simple structure is rarely researched. To address the issue, a novel LC‐based bipolar high‐voltage pulsed power supply is proposed in this paper. The proposed power supply is comprised of an inductance, two capacitances, a step‐up transformer, and two power switches sharing the same ground. By planning the switch sequence of the two power switches, a resonant stage and an idle stage are formed. The resonant stage is used to generate a bipolar pulse excitation voltage on DBD excimer lamps and an idle time in the excitation voltage is generated in the idle stage. The characteristics and the parameters design of the proposed power supply are studied by theoretical analysis. To verify the feasibility of the proposed power supply, an experimental setup is built with a DBD‐type excimer lamp. The experimental results show that the power supply not only better takes advantage of the potential of DBD excimer lamps, but also there is a fine luminous regulation feature for the excimer lamp. Besides these characteristics, the proposed power supply has several other benefits, such as good adaptability to different DBD‐type excimer lamps, a small number of components, and high efficiency.