2018/04/12 by Wenjie Xia, Dingxin Liu, Han Xu +5
Engineering · Medicine · #Aerosol Filtration and Electrostatic Precipitation #Plasma Applications and Diagnostics #Plasma Diagnostics and Applications
paper · doi:10.1088/1361-6595/aabdc1
openalex publication_date 2018/04/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract Argon is a widely used working gas of plasmas, which is much cheaper than helium but on the other hand much more difficult to generate diffuse discharge at atmospheric pressure. In order to meet the application requirements, plenty of researches have been reported to facilitate the diffuse discharge happening for argon plasmas, and in this paper an approach of using ethanol gas (EtOH) impurity is investigated. The discharge characteristics of Ar + EtOH plasma jet are studied as a function of the applied voltage and the concentration of EtOH, from which the concentration of EtOH between ∼200 and ∼3300 parts per million (ppm) is determined necessary for the generation of diffuse discharge. Compared with the helium plasma jet in literature, it is deduced that the diffuse discharge is probably caused by the Penning ionization happening between the metastable argon and EtOH. The discharge products of Ar + EtOH (672 ppm) plasma jet are measured and the corresponding chemistry pathways are analyzed. About 20% of EtOH is decomposed via complex chemical reactions to form more than a dozen of neutral species, such as CH 3 CHO, CH 3 COOH, CO, H 2 O, and C n H 2 n +2 ( n ≥ 3), and various kinds of ionic species, including C + , CH + , ArH + , <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msup> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> </mml:math> CH 3 CH 2 O − , etc.