On the Role of Capacitance Determination Accuracy for the Electrical Characterization of Pulsed Driven Dielectric Barrier Discharges

A dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) of coaxial geometry has been investigated. The discharge cell was filled by 100 mbar of argon and driven by positive square voltage pulses with a rise time of 20 ns and 75 ns. The internal discharge characteristics such as the discharge current, the gas gap voltage, the instantaneous power and energy have been determined from measured current and voltage waveforms. The peculiarities of the experimental evaluation of the discharge parameters are discussed in detail. Special attention is paid to the accurate experimental determination of the key capacitance values of the DBD, namely the capacitance of the reactor cell C_cell and the capacitance of the dielectric barriers C_d. The influence of the capacitance value accuracy on precision of electrical characterization is demonstrated and it is shown that a small uncertainty in the C_d value leads to large errors in the evaluation of the gas gap voltage. Nevertheless, the obtained accuracy of the capacitance values allows the reliable comparison of the electrical DBD parameters. These are sensitive to the mode of discharge excitation. The shortening of the voltage rise time leads to the increase of the total and instantaneous energy as well as the peak power dissipated into the discharge. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)