Studies on nanosecond pulsed atmospheric pressure discharge with particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision simulation

Abstract

Nanosecond pulsed atmospheric pressure discharge becomes an active research topic because of its promising prospect of applications in many areas. To understand its dynamics, the discharge process was studied by one-dimensional implicit particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC-MCC) simulation coupled with a particle renormalization algorithm, in which multiple electron Monte Carlo collisions per step were considered to improve the computation efficiency. In the simulation, the effects of discharge conditions such as plateau voltage, pulse rise time, and initial charged particle density were investigated. It is found that the plateau voltage in the pulse waveform is a major factor controlling the final charged particle density in the plasma bulk, and the built-up time and steady thickness of cathode sheath are proportional to the pulse rise time, whereas reversely proportional to the initial charged particle density.