Overview of Atmospheric Pressure Discharges Producing Nonthermal Plasma

Recently, much attention has been paid to gas discharges producing nonthermal plasma because of many potential benefits in industrial applications. Historically, past work focused on Dielectric Barrier (silent) Discharges (DBD) and pulse-periodical corona discharges. Recently, a number of new different discharge techniques succeeded in producing stable gas discharge at atmospheric pressure. Among these are repetitively pulsed glow discharge; continuous glow discharge in a gas flow; hollow-cathode atmospheric pressure discharge; RF and microwave (MW) discharges. Several new variants of the DBD have been demonstrated over a rather wide range of frequencies. All these forms of gas discharge are characterized by a strong nonequilibrium plasma state. We attempt to classify these discharges with respect to their properties, and an overview of possible applications is made. Conditions for the existence of homogenous and filamentary forms of each of the discharge types are discussed.