Modeling of Atmospheric-Pressure Dielectric Barrier Discharges in Argon with Small Admixtures of Tetramethylsilane

time-dependent, spatially one-dimensional fluid-Poisson model is applied to analyze the impact of small amounts of tetramethylsilane (TMS) as precursor on the discharge characteristics of an atmospheric-pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) in argon. Based on an established reaction kinetics for argon, it includes a plasma chemistry for TMS, which is validated by measurements of the ignition voltage at the frequency f =86.2 kHz for TMS amounts of up to 200 ppm. Details of both a reduced Ar-TMS reaction kinetics scheme and an extended plasma-chemistry model involving about 60 species and 580 reactions related to TMS are given. It is found that good agreement between measured and calculated data can be obtained, when assuming that 25