ZnO Nanowire-Based Corona Discharge Devices Operated Under Hundreds of Volts

Minimizing the voltage of corona discharges, especially when using nanomaterials, has been of great interest in the past decade or so. In this paper, we report a new corona discharge device by using ZnO nanowires operated in atmospheric air to realize continuous corona discharge excited by hundreds of volts. ZnO nanowires were synthesized on microelectrodes using electric-field-assisted wet chemical method, and a thin tungsten film was deposited on the microchip to enhance discharging performance. The testing results showed that the corona inception voltages were minimized greatly by using nanowires compared to conventional dischargers as a result of the local field enhancement of nanowires. The corona could be continuously generated and self-sustaining. It was proved that the law of corona inception voltage obeyed the conventional Peek’s breakdown criterion. An optimal thickness of tungsten film coated over ZnO nanowires was figured out to obtain the lowest corona inception voltage. The ion concentration of the nanowire-based discharger attained 10(17)/m(3) orders of magnitude, which is practicable for most discharging applications.