The Influence of Electrode Surface Mercury Film Deformation on the Breakdown Voltage of a Sub-Nanosecond Pulse Discharge Tube

A sub-nanosecond pulse discharge tube is a gas discharge tube which can generate a rapid high-voltage pulse of kilo-volts in amplitude and sub-nanoseconds in width. In this paper, the sub-nanosecond pulse discharge tube and its working principles are described. Because of the phenomenon that the deformation process of the mercury film on the electrode surface lags behind the charging process, the mercury film deformation process affects the dynamic breakdown voltage of the tube directly. The deformation of the mercury film is observed microscopically, and the dynamic breakdown voltage of the tube is messured using an oscillograph. The results show that all the parameters in the charging process, such as charging resistance, charging capacitance and DC power supply, affect the dynamic breakdown voltage of the tube. Based on these studies, the output pulse amplitude can be controlled continuously and individually by adjusting the power supply voltage. When the DC power supply is adjusted from 7 kV to 10 kV, the dynamic breakdown voltage ranges from 6.5 kV to 10 kV. According to our research, a kind of sub-nanosecond pulse generator is made, with a pulse width ranging from 0.5 ns to 2.5 ns, a rise time from 0.32 ns to 0.58 ns, and a pulse amplitude that is adjustable from 1.5 kV to 5 kV.

Breakdown Voltage Research of Penning Gas Mixture in Plasma Display Panel

Paschen law and equations, which ignore the influence of the Penning ionization on the electron ionization coefficient （α）, are always used as the approximation of the breakdown voltage criterion of the Penning gas mixture in current researches of discharge characteristics of the plasma display panel （PDP）. It is doubtful that whether their results match the facts. Based on the Townsend gas self-sustaining discharge condition and the chemical kinetics analysis of the Penning gas mixture discharging in PDP, the empirical equation to describe the breakdown of the Penning gas mixture is given. It is used to calculate the breakdown voltage curves of Ne-Xe/MgO and Ne-Ar/MgO in a testing macroscopic discharge cell of AC-PDP. The effective secondary electron emission coefficients （γeff） of the MgO protective layers are derived by comparing the breakdown voltage curves obtained from the empirical equation with the experimental data of breakdown voltages. In comparison with the results calculated by the Paschen law and the equation which ignore the influence of the Penning ionization on α , the results calculated by the empirical equation have better conformity with experimental data. The empirical equation characterizes the breakdown of the Penning gas mixture in PDP effectively, and gives a convenient way to study its breakdown characteristics and the secondary electron emission behaviors.

Filament Discharge Phenomena in Fingerprint Acquisition by Dielectric Barrier Discharge

In this paper, the dielectric barrier discharge fingerprint acquisition technique is introduced. The filament discharge phenomena were observed in the process of fingerprint acquisition. The filament discharge reduced the quality of fingerprint images. Obviously, it was necessary to eliminate streamer discharges in order to get good fingerprint images. The streamer discharge was considered to be the cause of the filament discharge in the experiment. The relationship between the critical electric field and the discharge gap was calculated with the Raether＇s model of streamer discharge. The calculated results and our experiment proved that it would be difficult for the streamer discharge to occur when the discharge gap was narrow. With a narrow discharge gap, the discharge was homogeneous, and the fingerprint images were clear and large in area. The images obtained in the experiment are very suitable for fingerprint identification as they contain more information.