Spectroscopic Study on a Direct-Current Driving Plasma Jet in Argon at Atmospheric Pressure

With a discharge device in a hollow-needle and plate electrode configurations, an atmospheric pressure uniform plasma plume is generated by DC voltage excitation in the ambient air with argon as working gas. The plasma plume is a pulsed discharge despite a direct current voltage is applied through measurements by optical and electrical methods. In order to explain the formation mechanism of the pulse, spatially resolved signals emitted from the plume were detected. It was found that the plasma plume denoted as the luminous layer propagates (a plasma bullet) from the hollow needle to the plate electrode except for the corona discharge in the vicinity of the hollow needle tip. Optical emission spectroscopy is used to investigate the excited electron temperature of the plasma plume as a function of the applied voltage or the spatial distribution of the excited electron temperature. The results show that the excited electron temperature (about 3 eV) increases with increasing applied voltage. Moreover, it increases with the increasing distance along the gas flow under constant voltage.