EPJ D Topical Review - Gas breakdown and secondary electron yields

Details

Published on 17 July 2014

In this EPJ D topical review, the authors present a systematic study of gas breakdown potentials. An analysis of the key elementary processes involved in low-current low-pressure discharges is given, with the aim of illustrating how such discharges are used to determine swarm parameters and how such data may be applied to the modeling of discharges.

Breakdown data obtained in a simple parallel-plate geometry are presented for a number of atomic and molecular gases. Ionisation coefficients, secondary electron yields and their influence on the breakdown are analysed, with special attention devoted to the non-hydrodynamic conditions near the cathode.