Seed-packed dielectric barrier device for plasma agriculture: Understanding its electrical properties through an equivalent electrical model

Seeds have been packed in a dielectric barrier device where cold atmospheric plasma has been generated to improve their germinative properties. Special attention has been paid on understanding the resulting plasma electrical properties through an equivalent electrical model whose experimental validity has been demonstrated here. In this model, the interelectrode gap is subdivided into four types of elementary domains, according to whether they contain electric charges (or not) and according to their type of medium (gas, seed, or insulator). The model enables us to study the influence of seeds on the plasma electrical properties by measuring and deducing several parameters (charge per filament, gas capacitance, plasma power, etc.) either in a no-bed configuration (i.e., no seed in the reactor) or in a packed-bed configuration (seeds in the reactor). In the second case, we have investigated how seeds can influence the plasma electrical parameters considering six specimens of seeds (bean, radish, coriander, lentil, sunflower, and corn). The influence of molecular oxygen (0-100 sccm) mixed with a continuous flow rate of helium (2 slm) is also investigated, especially through filaments breakdown voltages, charge per filament, and plasma power. It is demonstrated that such bed-packing drives to an increase in the gas capacitance (ζOFF), to a decrease in the β- parameter, and to variations of the filaments' breakdown voltages in a seed-dependent manner. Finally, we show how the equivalent electrical model can be used to assess the total volume of the contact points and the capacitance of the seeds in the packed-bed configuration, and we demonstrate that germinative effects can be induced by plasma on four of the six agronomical specimens.