ELECTRICAL AND OPTICAL EXPLORATIONS OF A NEW ATMOSPHERIC PLASMA DEVICE

An Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet (APPJ) system which works under the atmospheric pressure has been designed and constructed. The system is operated at 13.6 MHz and produces cold plasma with 1 - 4 eV. The preliminary explorations have proven that the system can operate under a varied flow rate of He media. According to the preliminary measurements, a plasma current around 0.38 - 0.76 A has been measured. By using an IR camera, the plasma temperature is found as T = 28˚C. According to the optical measurements, the reactive species such as OH, O, N, N2 have been detected experimentally via an optical emission spectrometer. The APPJ device is proposedfor surface disinfection, since the produced plasma is harmful for the bacterial. The experimental setup is given in Fig. 1(a) and the resulting plasma amplitude measured by a Rogowski coil is given in Fig. 1(b). There exists a overall increasing trend in amplitude by gas speed. The optical observations proves that the plasma produces many ionized ions as in Fig. 1(c).