Power Consideration for Pulsed Discharges in Potassium Seeded Argon

Minimization of energy consumed in plasma generation is critical for applications, in which a large volume of plasmas is needed. We suggest
that a high electron density atmospheric pressure plasmas can be generated by pulsed discharges in potassium seeded argon at an elevated temperature with a very small power input. The ionization efficiency and power budget of pulsed discharges in such plasmas are analytically studied. The results show that ionization efficiency of argon, especially at small reduced electric field E/N (the ratio of the electric field to the gas number density), is improved ffectively in the presence of small amount of potassium additives. Power input of pulsed discharge to sustain a prescribed average level of ionization in potassium seeded argon is three orders of magnitude lower than that in pure argon. Further, unlike in pure argon, it is found that very short high-voltage pulses with very high repetition rates are unnecessary in potassium seeded argon. A pulse with 100ns of pulse duration, 5kHz of repetition rate, and 2Td (1Td=1×10^-21Vm²) of E/N is enough to sustain an electron density of 10¹⁹m^-3 in 1 atm 1500K Ar+0.1% K mixture, with a very small power input of about
0.08×10⁴W/m³.