Identification of the normal and abnormal glow discharge modes in a neon-xenon gas mixture at low pressure

Abstract

In this paper, we focused on the identification of the normal and abnormal glow discharge modes in a neon-xenon gas mixture at low pressure. We considered four gas mixtures: 90%Ne-10%Xe, 80%Ne-20%Xe, 70%Ne-30%Xe and 50%Ne-50%Xe at 1.5 Torr. The range of the gap voltage is 150–500 V. A one-dimensional fluid model with multiple species was used in this work, and the metastable state of the atoms as well as the radiation effects were integrated into the model too. The input data changed for each percentage in the gas mixture, and was calculated by BOLSIG+ software. The parameters of particle transport and their rate coefficients strictly depend on the mean electron energy. The results show that the neon ion density is negligible compared to the xenon ion density, mostly in the case of 50%Ne-50%Xe.