Effects of metastable atoms on breakdown voltage in Argon DBD

A one-dimensional fluid calculation is performed to find out the effects of metastable atoms in alternating-current (AC) driven dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) of argon. Dependences of the breakdown voltage and the density of the metastable state atoms on the driving frequency and the pressure are investigated to clarify the importance of the secondary electron emission by metastable atoms and the metastable-metastable ionization reaction. The results suggest that such processes can be significant when the driving frequency becomes several hundred Hz under several Torr.