Atmospheric pressure discharges have been widely investigated
in recent years because of a variety of advantages
they offer, such as low-cost equipment, no vacuum operation
and the discharge reactivity. Atmospheric pressure plasma,
such as the arc, torch produced by arc discharge have also
been investigated and applied to a number of industrial fields.
However, its application is limited yet, because these plasma
sources are thermal plasma sources having high gas temperature
that leads to indiscriminate ‘‘burning’’ rather than
selective chemical reactions. A discharge generated at or
upon a dielectric surface can generate highly active nonequilibrium
plasma at atmospheric pressure and even at room
temperature. Roth et al. , Koinuma et al. and Park et
al. [7–9] have developed kinds of non-equilibrium atmospheric
pressure plasma sources, such as symmetric pectinate
electrodes panel driven by audio-frequency power and plasma
jet (or cold torch) source driven by 13.56 MHz RF power,
respectively. Those atmospheric pressure plasma sources can be used for environmental protections, deposition of thin
films, etching materials and surface treatment of materials.