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Generation Of Excited Species In A Streamer Discharge, Shirshak K. Dhali

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

At or near atmospheric pressure, most transient discharges, particularly in molecular gases or gas mixture containing molecular gases, result in a space charge dominated transport called a streamer discharge. The excited species generation in such discharges forms the basis for plasma chemistry in most technological applications. In this paper, we simulate the propagation of streamers in atmospheric pressure N₂ to understand the energy partitioning in the formation of various excited species and compare the results to a uniform Townsend discharge. The model is fully two-dimensional with azimuthal symmetry. The results show a significantly larger fraction of the energy goes …