Generation and propagation characteristics of vacuum pulse discharge metal plasma

This paper investigates the generation and spatial propagating properties of vacuum discharge plasma with cone-plate and cone-mesh electrode configurations. Under the condition of single pulse discharge where the discharge current is 200 A and the discharge duration is 13 s, the property parameters of the generated plasma, such as electron density, electron temperature, space potential, and ions energy, are measured by the probe method. The experiment and simulation results show that the initial voltage of the cone-mesh electrode configuration is higher and the density of the generated plasma is larger. Moreover, the plasma moving along the axial direction of the electrodes possesses the largest density. However, the propagation velocities of the plasmas generated by the two kinds of electrode configurations show no apparent difference.