Contrasting characteristics of linear-field and cross-field atmospheric plasma jets

This letter reports an experimental study of two types of atmospheric pressure plasma jets in terms of their fundamental properties and their efficiency in etching polymeric materials. The first plasma jet has a cross-field configuration with its electric field perpendicular to its gas flow field, whereas the second is a linear-field device having parallel electric and flow fields. The linear-field jet is shown to drive electron transportation to the downstream application region, thus facilitating more active plasma chemistry there. This is responsible for its etching rate of polyamide films being 13-fold that of its cross-field counterpart. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.