Electron heating and mode transition in dual frequency atmospheric pressure argon dielectric barrier discharge

Plasma ionization, excitation, mode transitions and associated electron heating mechanisms in atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) driven by dual radio frequency sources are investigated in this paper. The electrons are found to be heated mainly by the high frequency component in the plasma bulk when discharged in α mode. On the contrary, the low frequency component is primarily responsible for heating in the sheath which is caused by intense motion in the sheath. It was also found that variation of the lower frequency component ratio could effectively modulate the electron energy distribution as determined from time averaged EEDF. The results above have demonstrated that the independent control of plasma parameters via non-linear synergistic effect between the dual frequency sources can be achieved through reasonable selection of processing parameters.