Summary form only given. Microhollow cathode discharges (MHCDs)are high pressure gas discharges between a cathode, which contains acircular opening and an arbitrarily shaped anode. The diameter of thecathode hole as well as the electrode gap is approximately 100 μm.Operation on such a small spatial scale enables stable direct currentglow discharge operation even at high pressure. Microhollow cathodedischarges have been operated at atmospheric pressure in rare gases(e.g., argon, xenon), rare gas halogen mixtures (e.g., argon fluoride,xenon chloride) and in air. Stable dc high pressure glow dischargeoperation is of interest in lighting, plasma processing, and as plasmacathodes for air plasma ramparts. The required plasma size for theseapplications exceeds that of a single microhollow cathode discharge andtherefore requires their arrangement in arrays. Parallel operation of upto sixteen micro discharges has been reported using distributed ballast.A simpler way to generate arrays is to operate the glow discharges in arange where the voltage current characteristic has a positive slope,e.g. In the abnormal glow region. This can be achieved by limiting thecathode surface to a small value such that even at low currents it iscompletely covered by the plasma. In order to reduce the cathode area,the cathode surface was covered with a dielectric, such that only thecylindrical surface area of the cathode opening was available as cathode
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