Effect of the corona discharge on peel microstructure

Abstract

To better understand the biological effects of high-voltage corona field, expanding the application and study a new means of mutation breeding. A new experimental device which can produce the high-voltage corona electric field is developed. The design parameters and the electric field characteristics of the device are measured and analyzed. whether positive or negative corona discharge, the corona discharge current of the plate is increased with the applied voltage increasing; the voltage range of negative corona discharge is wider than that of the positive corona discharge, meanwhile under the same applied voltage, the negative corona discharge current is bigger, not only its curve is smooth, but also its discharge is stable. When the voltage is lower than 20kV the temperature increase linearly; after the voltage beyond 20kV the temperature is basically stabilizing, and it is about 10 °C higher than the room temperature, which shows that the thermal effect of electric field is small. The tip discharge current at the sample location under the action of pulse electric field is known to be about 10µA. The electric field strength is 7.0 kV·cm−1. By atomic force microscope, It is found that under the negative corona electric field the surface of peel becomes hole and the diameter of the hole is about 1µm. The hole can be observed under the different electric field processing time (20 ∼ 150 min). The developed device can produce a good high-voltage corona discharge. The voltage range of the positive corona discharge is narrow, while the voltage range of the negative corona discharge is wide and stable. In addition, the thermal effect produced by the high-voltage corona electric field on the sample is very small, so usually it can be ignored. The high-voltage corona electric field can change the surface morphology of some films, which shows that the effect of the corona electric field makes the current density of the sample location very large in a small cross section. In conclusion, the negative high-voltage corona discharge should well be used to research in biophysics such as the transgenic plants. High-voltage corona discharge mutagenesis has become a new physical mutation technique.