A comparative study of water electrodes versus metal electrodes for excitation of nanosecond-pulse homogeneous dielectric barrier discharge in open air

Atmospheric pressure low-temperature plasmas produced by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) provide a promising approach for civilian application of pulsed power technology. In this paper, repetitive nanosecond pulses were generated using a magnetic compression solid-state pulsed power generator, and the rise time and pulse duration of the nanosecond pulse are ∼30 and 70 ns, respectively. The DBD in open air is created using two kinds of electrodes, i.e., water and metal electrodes. The electrical, luminous, and optical characteristics of the DBDs under these two electrodes are studied and compared. The experimental results show that no filaments are observed and the discharge is homogeneous when water electrodes are used. The DBD still behaves in a filamentary mode when the discharge gap is extended to 4 cm in the case of metal electrodes. The results are validated by fast images taken by an intensified charge-coupled device camera. In addition, some discussion about the experimental results is presented. Improvement of discharge uniformity is due to the effect of resistive stabilization using water electrodes.