Generation of Low Temperature Plasma at High-Frequency and High-Voltage: An Experimental Study

A novel plasma source,capable of generating low temperature plasma at high frequency and high voltage,was developed to overcome the limitations of the conventional gas discharge plasma source,such as low power efficiency and short service life.The newly-designed plasma source comprised the full-bridge phase-shift soft-switching control,optocoupler isolation,zero-voltage switch and high-frequency resonant circuit.The prototyped plasma generator was tested.The results show that the new plasma generator outperforms the conventional DC plasma generator.To be specific,the steady low temperature plasma at 262 kHz could be regularly generated;the plasma length reached 13.1 cm.In addition,the efficiency of zero-voltage soft switching in steady state was 87.4%,being 10.4% higher than that of the conventional DC plasma generator,indicating a reduction of energy consumption and an enhancement of power supply efficiency.