The role of vibrational temperature variations in a pulsed dielectric barrier discharge plasma device

The use of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasmas has become a practical way to carry out surface treatment where precise control of the plasma parameters, such as rotational and vibrational temperatures (T_rot and T_vib), is required. As the T_vib of an atmospheric pressure plasma jet appears to be the most important parameter related to the improvement of surface treatments, in this work, we analysed two methods to increase the values of T_vib in a DBD plasma jet device. One of the methods is to reduce the exit size (ø) of the DBD reactor, which results in an increase in the measured T_vib values, due to an increase in the pressure inside the reactor. The other method is to change the gas flow rate (GFR) used to produce the plasma jets. This leads to a T_vib reduction when the GFR is increased in the case of using helium or nitrogen as the working gas, but the opposite happens (an increase in the T_vib values) when argon is used, with different phenomena causing the variation of T_vib in each situation.