Experimental Study on the Electrical Characteristics of Low-Pressure Nanosecond Pulsed CO2 Dielectric Barrier Discharge

Nanosecond pulsed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) has great application prospects for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) on Mars. In the low-pressure environment similar to Mars' atmosphere, the characteristics of CO₂ DBD driven by two different types of nanosecond pulsed power supplies were compared. Also, the effect of different system parameters on the discharge was studied through univariate experiments. The results showed that the discharge characteristics driven by different power supplies were significantly different, and different relationships between the energization conditions and discharge parameters were obtained: the current and deposited energy of a single discharge (occurring on either the rising or falling edge) increased with increasing voltage rise rate and decreased with increasing repetition frequency, but were irrelevant to plateau duration; increasing the voltage rise rate, decreasing the plateau duration and discharge gap, and proper gas flow rate all increased the single pulse energy.