Investigation of ambient air species diffusion into the effluent of an atmospheric pressure plasma jet by measurements and modeling

The diffusion of ambient air species into the effluent of a cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP) jet operated with pure argon is quantified using both experimental methods and theoretical estimations by a convection-diffusion approach. In the effluent of CAP jets operated in ambient air, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) are generated. ROS and RNS are believed to play a central role in biomedical applications of low temperature atmospheric pressure plasmas. The inflow of atmospheric oxygen is determined by a novel absorption technique in the VUV spectral range, where emission originating from within the discharge is used as light source. An analytic expression for the estimation of the on-axis density of ambient species was obtained assuming a stationary drift-diffusion equation and is compared to complete numerical results. The easy to use expression correlates well with the experimental results obtained.