Properties study of inductively coupled nitrogen plasmas and pressure effects on them

摘要

An attempt has been made to study the properties of high-pressure gas discharges by applying the radiofrequency (rf) inductively coupled plasma (ICP) technique. It is proposed that such an approach can be helpful to explore the potential suitability of gases or gas mixtures for gas circuit breaker (GCB) applications. SF_6 gas has hitherto been considered as the best medium for arc-extinction in gas circuit breakers. But since SF_6 has recently been categorized as a greenhouse gas, huge effort has been directed at discovering environmentally friendly alternative(s), such as nitrogen or nitrogen mixtures. We have tried to study the pressure effects over N_2 plasma. A two-dimensional, optically thin and axisymmetric ICP model was solved numerically to predict properties of argon-nitrogen and nitrogen plasmas.