Study on the characteristics of helium plasma jet by pulsed micro-hollow cathode discharge

Abstract In this paper, the helium plasma jet generated by micro-hollow cathode discharge (MHCD) was studied. The MHCD was driven by a square-wave pulsed power source, and the characteristics of discharge and plasma jet were measured experimentally. The influences of the gas flow rate on the MHCD and the plasma jet were investigated. And the propagation mechanisms of the plasma jet were analyzed. The results show that within 100–1000 sccm of the gas flow rate, the breakdown delay time of the MHCD increases with the helium flow increasing. It is considered that the gas flow affects the density of seed electrons and thus the breakdown delay time. With the helium flow rate increasing, the whole plasma jet length increases firstly and then decreases. A detailed investigation shows that during one discharge pulse, two distinguishable propagation processes of the plasma jet are observed. It is found that the jet of the first stage is formed during the rising edge of the current pulse, while the other is generated after the discharge current becomes stable. The propagation velocity of jet in the first stage is on the order of several km s −1 , which is similar to that of the discharge evolution obtained by simulation. And the propagation speed of the jet in the second stage is on the order of several hundred m s −1 , which is close to the velocity of gas flow. The spatial–temporal distributions of light emission show that high-energy electrons can only be observed during the jet propagation in the first stage, and low-energy electrons can be detected in both the first and second stages. The results show that the electric field plays an important role on the jet propagation in the first stage, and the jet propagation during the second stage is mainly promoted by the thermal gas expansion.