Modification of Atmospheric Pressure Air Plasma Jet: A Simulation and Experimental Study

Atmospheric pressure air plasma jet (Air APPJ) was modified mainly by coating the shank of tungsten electrode with a dielectric layer to decrease the discharge voltage and increase the discharge stability.The plasma generation was mathematically modeled, numerically simulated with software COMSOL and experimentally evaluated.The influence of the electrode's geometry and alignment, including the exposed tip-apex curvature radius, shank diameter and electrode spacing, on the discharge behavior was investigated for design optimization.The simulated results show that the tip-apex radius has a major impact.The new air APPJ with the optimized tip geometry was tested.As shown in the measured results, the fairly stable APPJ had a diameter of 3 mm and a length of 17 mm.Moreover, the discharge behavior of the newly-designed air APPJ outperforms argon discharge properties, because of higher discharge power/temperature, longer/wider plasma jet and more suitable for application in active reactions.