Abstract
We report the effect of a pulse bias scheme on atmospheric plasma generation utilizing micromachined electrodes. Taking advantage of a micron size gap in the microelectrode, a relatively low voltage of less than 300 V becomes usable for atmospheric plasma generation and a large volume of atmospheric plasma was demonstrated on an array of microelectrodes by optimizing the duty cycle of a pulse voltage. Thermal images during plasma generation revealed a significant change in device temperature depending on the microsecond duty cycle. The elevated temperature of the device affects current–voltage (I–V) characteristics of the glow discharge and appears to be responsible for glow-arc transition for a longer duty cycle.