Peculiarities of the Gas Breakdown in Narrow Discharge Gaps at High Pressures

Plasma treatment of porous polymer materials is a promising method for creating new materials that can be widely applied, in particular, in medicine and for development of new types of biocompatible and biodegradable polymer materials. In this work, plasma treatment of porous polymer materials is studied to reveal the breakdown conditions and to optimize this method of treatment. Experiments have been performed to determine the breakdown voltage in the discharge gap of a pulse barrier discharge at different air pressures and different gaps in the region of the minimum of the Paschen curve. An approximation of the Paschen curve with the variable γ is proposed, which provides good agreement with the experimental results. A technique of barrier discharge treatment of the inner surface of pores in a dielectric material based on optimizing the pressure inside the pores is proposed. The treatment of few-micron pores requires pressures substantially above atmospheric. The first results demonstrating the possibility of modifying the bulk of the polymer material by means of the barrier discharge treatment at the time when the gas pressure in the discharge chamber drops are obtained.