Enhancement of VUV Emission from a Coaxial Xenon Excimer Ultraviolet Lamp Driven by Distorted Bipolar Square Voltages

Enhancement of vacuum UV emission (172 nm VUV) from a coaxial xenon excimer UV lamp (EUV) driven by distorted 50 kHz bipolar square voltages, as compared to that by sinusoidal voltages, is investigated numerically in this paper. A self‐consistent radial one‐dimensional fluid model, taking into consideration non‐local electron energy balance, is employed to simulate the discharge physics and chemistry. The discharge is divided into two three‐period portions; these include: the pre‐discharge, the discharge (most intense at 172 nm VUV emission) and the post‐discharge periods. The results show that the efficiency of VUV emission using the distorted bipolar square voltages is much greater than when using sinusoidal voltages; this is attributed to two major mechanisms. The first is the much larger rate of change of the voltage in bipolar square voltages, in which only the electrons can efficiently absorb the power in a very short period of time. Energetic electrons then generate a higher concentration of metastable (and also excited dimer) xenon that is distributed more uniformly across the gap, for a longer period of time during the discharge process. The second is the comparably smaller amount of “wasted” power deposition by Xe⁺₂ in the post‐discharge period, as driven by distorted bipolar square voltages, because of the nearly vanishing gap voltage caused by the shielding effect resulting from accumulated charges on both dielectric surfaces (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)