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Frequency Response Of Atmospheric Pressure Gas Breakdown In Micro/Nanogaps, Abbas Semnani, Ayyaswamy Venkattraman, Alina A. Alexeenko, Dimitrios Peroulis
Frequency Response Of Atmospheric Pressure Gas Breakdown In Micro/Nanogaps, Abbas Semnani, Ayyaswamy Venkattraman, Alina A. Alexeenko, Dimitrios Peroulis
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Faculty Publications
In this paper, we study gas breakdown in micro/nanogaps at atmospheric pressure from low RF to high millimeter band. For gaps larger than about 10 lm, the breakdown voltage agrees with macroscale vacuum experiments, exhibiting a sharp decrease at a critical frequency, due to transition between the boundary- and diffusion-controlled regimes, and a gradual increase at very high frequencies as a result of inefficient energy transfer by field. For sub-micron gaps, a much lower breakdown is obtained almost independent of frequency because of the dominance of field emission
Pre-Breakdown Evaluation Of Gas Discharge Mechanisms In Microgaps, Abbas Semnani, Ayyaswamy Venkattraman, Alina A. Alexeenko, Dimitrios Peroulis
Pre-Breakdown Evaluation Of Gas Discharge Mechanisms In Microgaps, Abbas Semnani, Ayyaswamy Venkattraman, Alina A. Alexeenko, Dimitrios Peroulis
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Faculty Publications
The individual contributions of various gas discharge mechanisms to total pre-breakdown current in microgaps are quantified numerically. The variation of contributions of field emission and secondary electron emission with increasing electric field shows contrasting behavior even for a given gap size. The total current near breakdown decreases rapidly with gap size indicating that microscale discharges operate in a high-current, low-voltage regime. This study provides the first such analysis of breakdown mechanisms and aids in the formulation of physics-based theories for microscale breakdown