Polarity Transition and Ionization Enhancement of Atmospheric Argon Plasma Jet Plumes Generated by Repetitive Microwave Pulses

Although plasmas commonly present as electrical neutrality, for plasma jet plume at atmospheric gas pressure, it might appear nonneutral polarity due to plasma bullet being consisted of a large amount of electron avalanches. In this paper, the polarity transition and the ionization enhancement of atmospheric argon plasma jet plumes generated by the repetitive microwave pulses are studied. Three interesting phenomena have been found despite of discharges either with or without the hairpin metal wire, including: 1) a potential voltage pulse with positive polarity invariably arises steeply at each moment of power on; 2) high-speed photograph images show that there are ionization enhancements happened twice in each pulsed periods; and 3) ahead of the confluence point, the polarity transits from negative to positive while behind of this point, its positive polarity changes into the negative one. Moreover, the experiment results and electromagnetic simulations suggest that the theories of guided negative ionization wave and microwave resonant discharge excited by surface plasma polaritons should be used to interpret the spatial–temporal discharge process of the proposed microwave plasma jets.