Investigation on the Dynamic Process of Gas Breakdown across Microgaps under Pulsed Voltage

The electrical discharge and insulation performance at microscale have attracted much attention as the physical dimensions of electron devices are aggressively shrinking down. Hence, to prevent unwanted breakdown or utilize for producing microplasma, both require a better understanding of the physical process of breakdown across micro gaps, which cannot be explained by the classical Paschen law1. Therefore, in the present work, the discharge morphology and breakdown channels across various gap lengths have been investigated in air atmosphere, based on the home-built electro-optical measurement system2, The pulse breakdown voltages as a function of gap lengths are obtained as well as the corresponding discharge morphology.