A Novel Power Supply for Generating a One Atmosphere Uniform Glow Discharge Plasma (OAUGDP®)

A high voltage transformer connected to an atmospheric plasma generator is driven as a current-fed push-pull parallel resonant system, switched by a resonant lamp controller integrated circuit from Texas Instruments (UC3872) in such a manner as to be automatically maintained at resonance. The frequency range of interest is the audio range, which creates a particularly uniform glow discharge in atmospheric pressure air. Frequency control is achieved by a specially constructed high voltage variable capacitor connected parallel to the secondary, in conjunction with a variable parallel primary inductance. Voltage control is achieved by variation of the input DC current amplitude.