Surface dielectric barrier discharge with trenches in insulating material

The defects within the surface of the insulating material considerably influence the performance of the dielectric barrier. The trenches are one of the foremost common defects usually caused by the impact of hit and chemical corrosion. The trenches within the surface can change the propagation path of the streamers and the volumetric force produced. In this work, a two-dimensional self-consistent fluid model was built to study surface dielectric barrier discharge with trenches within the surface of the dielectric barrier, including electron density distribution, surface charge evolution, and electric parameters. The results indicate that with the increase in trenches' depth, the streamer will diffuse outward into the ambient air, which is closely related to the ionization and electric field distortion in the trenches and at the edge of the trenches. With different sequences of the trenches in the dielectric, the deeper trench is the dominate role in changing the streamer propagation path. The distorted orientation and value of the electric field in and on the trenches account for the differences. Compared with the discharge on the flat dielectric, the diffusion of plasma and propagation distance is enhanced with the increase in the trenches' depth, bringing larger dealing area and targeted species distributions.