Fluid simulation of atmospheric argon RF dielectric barrier discharges: Role of neutral gas temperature

Abstract

For atmospheric argon RF dielectric barrier discharges, a self-consistent one-dimensional fluid model based on the drift-diffusive approximations of the particles is established to investigate the role of the neutral gas temperature on the discharge process and the plasma characteristics. A finite difference method is used to solve numerically the model, and the numerical results are obtained for the cases that the neutral gas temperature varies from 300 to 600 K. It shows that an increase in the neutral gas temperature causes a decrease in the ionization rate peak and a decrease in the plasma density, but the electric field and the electron temperature do not change very much. Moreover, the discharge mode transition from α mode to α-γ mode occurs because the growing ion flux induces more secondary electron flux, even if the ions entering the sheaths decrease. In addition, the ground state ionization and the ground state excitation are the main collisions in the argon discharges. When metastable atoms are focused on, the three-body quenching is also an important collision progress.