Paschen breakdown curve by one-dimensional PIC-MCC simulation

Abstract

The voltage at which a gas confined in a gap ignites, i.e. the breakdown voltage, is a function of the total pressure (p) and the gap size (d). The understanding of gas discharge has been important in applications of weakly ionized plasmas and studying the properties of the plasma medium, such as nanotechnoogy, ion sources and thrusters [1-2]. We obtained the Paschen breakdown curve by considering the energy and angle dependent secondary electron emission coefficient γse for ions impinging on a MgO surface and compared it with the results of fluid simulation. For the dc breakdown, a parallel electrode assumed to be coated with MgO was considered. The gap distance between two parallel electrodes was fixed 100μm and the gas pressure varied between 100 to 1000Torr. For these simulations, Ne-Xe mixture gas was employed and an elastic, excitation and ionization collisions between electrons and neutrals as well as elastic and resonant charge exchange collisions between ions and neutrals were added to the original XPDP1 code [3]. Figure 1 shows the Paschen breakdown curves by one-dimensional PIC-MCC simulation and twodimensional fluid simulation at typical pd values used in PDP cells (1-10Torr cm). Four symbols correspond to the data from one-dimensional PIC simulation results with the energy and angle dependent γse. The solid lines were obtained using our two-dimensional fluid simulation. The constant γse used in fluid simulation are 0.2 and 0.05 for Ne and Xe ions, respectively. While the simulation results had some discrepancies, the trend of these curves is obtained. The breakdown voltage increases as the Xe content is increased and minimum voltages are shifted to higher pd values around 3Torr cm in PIC simulations [4]. The Paschen breakdown curves for Ne-Xe mixture gas have been investigated using one-