Computational study of temporal behavior of incident species impinging on a water surface in dielectric barrier discharge for the understanding of plasma–liquid interface

Abstract

A lipid bilayer is a basic structure of the cell membrane and is stable in liquid solution. In this study, we analyzed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) containing water on a quartz substrate using a one-dimensional fluid model. To simulate atmospheric pressure plasma for practical use, a tiny amount of N2 gas (0.5 ppm) was added to He gas ambient as an impure gas. The calculated current–voltage (I–V) characteristics reproduced the measured ones qualitatively. We focused on the behavior of DBD at the plasma–liquid interface and analyzed the temporal behavior of the electric field strength and incident fluxes of charged, excited, and radical species on the water surface. By varying the gap length, it was shown that the maximum electric field strength in an AC cycle saturated at gap lengths ≥0.15 cm. The incident fluxes of N2+ and He2+ on the water surface are almost the same and show strong correlations with the electric field in the vicinity of the water surface.