Optical characteristics of the filamentary and diffuse modes in surface dielectric barrier discharge

•We estimate surface discharge area by image processing method.•Diffuse discharge with a larger area behaves a good uniformity and stability.•Filamentary discharge phase is characterized by higher emission intensity.•Diffuse discharge has a higher rotational temperature than filamentary discharge.•The rotational temperature is nearly identical in the filamentary discharge phase.

Surface dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasmas generally exhibits filamentary and diffuse discharges at atmospheric air. The focus of this investigation is on the different optical characteristics and quantitative research about morphological features of two discharge modes. The temporally and spatially resolved characteristics of discharge phenomenon together with the gas temperature are presented with microsecond time scale. Discharge area is estimated by the sum of pixels that equal to “1” in MATLAB software. The formation of diffuse plasma mainly depends on an increase of the ionization coefficient and a creation of sufficient seed electrons by the Penning effect at low electric fields. Accordingly, experimental measurements show that diffuse discharge during the negative half cycle has good uniformity and stability compared with filamentary discharge during the positive half cycle. The rotational temperatures of plasma are determined by comparing the experimental spectra with the simulated spectra that have been investigated. The plasma gas temperature keeps almost constant in the filamentary discharge phase and subsequently increased by about 115 K during the diffuse discharge. In addition, it is shown to be nearly identical in the axial direction. Non-uniform temperature distribution can be observed in the radial direction with large fluctuations. The plasma length is demonstrated almost the same between two discharge modes.

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