Micro-hollow cathode dischargers

In order to develop a hollow cathode discharge (HCD) with its increased current over planar electrode glow discharges, the cathode fall, which is on the order of the mean free path for ionization, must be comparable in length to the hole diameter. This indicates that the discharge parameters vary with pressure, p, times hole diameter, D. The pD product for stable operation of a hollow cathosde discharge was quoted to be on the order of one to ten Torr cm for noble gases, less for molecular gases. White (1959) observed the hollow cathode effect in a neon discharge at a pressure of 100 Torr when the hole dimensions were less than 1 mm. The cathode hole in his experiments changed from a cylindrical into a spherical cavity due to sputtering. The anode consisted in White's experiment of a pin on the axis of the discharge geometry. We have studied micro-hollow (submillimeter) cathode discharges between two electrodes with aligned cylindrical holes by determining the current-voltage characteristics and the visual appearance of the discharge in argon over a wide range of pressure and voltage. The cross-section of the discharge geometry. The cathode is made of molybdenum or barium oxide inserted into a tungsten matrix (dispenser-cathode), the anode of molybdenum, and the dielectric spacer is mica. The discharge was operated under dc conditions, with half-wave rectified ac voltage applied, and pulsed with a 400 μs rectangular voltage pulse. The lower limit in pressure was determined by the maximum voltage which could be applied to the discharge geometry without breakdown along insulators. The upper limit, in this study, is determined by the transition from cathode electrode emission due to ion-impact to thermal emission of electrons, which causes a dramatic increase in current and a drop in forward voltage to values on the order of 20 V