Investigation of the Driving Frequency Effect on the RF-Driven Atmospheric Pressure Micro Dielectric Barrier Discharges

The discharge characteristics of the radio frequency (RF) surface dielectric barrier discharge have been simulated for the investigation of the ratio of the ion transit time to the RF period. From one-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation for a planar dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), it was observed that the high-frequency driving voltage confines the ions in the plasma because of a shorter RF period than the ion transit time. For two-dimensional surface dielectric barrier discharges, a fluid simulation is performed to investigate the characteristics of RF discharges from 1 MHz to 40 MHz. The ratio of the peak density to the average density decreases with the increasing frequency, and the spatiotemporal discharge patterns change abruptly with the change in the ratio of ion transit time to the RF period.