Repetitively Pulsed Discharges Ignited in Microchannels Between Two Nonequally Broad Planar Electrodes and Their Charging for Nanoscale Aerosol Particles

There has been considerable interest in nonthermal atmospheric pressure discharges due to their widely used industrial applications. A repetitively pulsed (RP) discharge ignited in microchannels between two nonequally broad planar electrodes is studied in this paper. The discharge current attains several $10^{\mathrm {-5}}$ A orders of magnitude, and the ion concentration produced in interelectrode space by RP discharge is estimated to be about $10^{17}/\text{m}^{3}$ . The duration of each time of RP discharge is several $10^{\mathrm {-8}}$ s and the repetition frequency exceeds a few tenths of kilohertz. The repetition frequency of RP discharge depends on the $RC$ product, applied voltage, and the environmental humidity. The experiments of charging aerosol particles by RP discharges have shown that for particles with diameters of 34.8 and 103 nm, the charging efficiency can attain 14.8% and 35%, respectively.