Study of Transient Processes by Measurements of Dynamic Breakdown Voltages

Abstract

Statistically based measurements of dynamic breakdown voltages U b and breakdown delay times t d and their variations in transient regimes are a convenient method for to study stochastic processes of electrical breakdown in gases. Accompanied by approximate analytical and exact numerical models, they can be used to study the gas-phase and surface processes during the transient regimes of establishment and relaxation of discharges. In a series of papers it has been shown how measurements of the breakdown delay times were applied to investigate collision and transport processes (surface recombination of nitrogen atoms, decay of charged particles, effective secondary electron yield, etc.). In this paper we present analysis of these processes based on measurements of the breakdown voltages U b for linearly rising pulses. Some preliminary results of applying this method were presented 1. The experimental details are shortly summarized in section 2, while the theoretical expressions for \( \overline {{{U}_{b}}} (k) \) and statistical time delay \( \overline {{{t}_{s}}} (k) \) are derived in section 3. In section 4, the experimental breakdown voltage distributions are fitted by theoretical predictions based on approximate analytical and numerical models and dependence of the effective secondary electron yield γ on the overvoltages is obtained.