Morphological study of the localized growth of materials in dielectric barrier discharge

The localized growth of materials has been realized in a dielectric barrier discharge reactor in the mixture of acetylene and argon in previous work. In this paper, the morphology of the materials synthesized in the process is studied. The results indicate that the polymer's structure consists of three layers. The layer near the substrate is homogeneous with thickness of several micrometres; the middle layer is composed of dense bulges with height of about more than 10μm in average. The distance between two neighbouring bulges is about 230μm; the top layer is made up of a few large columns with the height up to 2mm, and with the average distance of about 3.5mm. The growth of the three layers corresponds to three types of discharge. The discharge mechanism is analysed through studying the morphology of the polymer. It can be deduced from the morphology that the first and second discharge phases should belong to the Townsend breakdown, and the last discharge phase should be explained on the basis of the streamer mechanism.