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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Incorporating Collisions And Resistance Into The Transition From Field Emission To The Space Charge Regime, Samuel D. Dynako, Adam M. Darr, Allen L. Garner Aug 2018

Incorporating Collisions And Resistance Into The Transition From Field Emission To The Space Charge Regime, Samuel D. Dynako, Adam M. Darr, Allen L. Garner

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Advancements in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and microplasmas, particularly with respect to applications in combustion and biotechnology, motivate studies into microscale gas breakdown to enable safe system design and implementation. Breakdown at microscale deviates from that predicted by Paschen’s law due to field emission—the stripping of electrons from the cathode in the presence of strong surface field—and follows the Fowler-Nordheim (FN) law. As injected current increases at this length scale, electrons accumulate in the gap and FN electron emission becomes space charge limited, leading to the Child-Langmuir (CL) law at vacuum and the Mott-Gurney (MG) law at high pressure. While theoretical …


Particle Modeling Of Non-Equilibrium Field Emission Driven Rf Microplasmas, Siva Sashank Tholeti Aug 2016

Particle Modeling Of Non-Equilibrium Field Emission Driven Rf Microplasmas, Siva Sashank Tholeti

Open Access Dissertations

Non-equilibrium microplasmas at atmospheric pressures have been investigated for active flow control, micropropulsion and electronic display applications to name a few. The operational voltages for these microplasmas are on the order of kilovolts. When the electric field at the electrodes reaches GV/m or tens of GV/m either due to reduced interelectrode spacing and surface irregularities or due to carefully designed nanostructures on the electrodes, quantum processes such as field emission and field ionization come into effect. These can potentially reduce the operational voltages of microplasma devices by an order of magnitude. Due to the rarefied and non-equilibrium nature of these …