Finite Element Analysis of Electrostatic Field in Chiral Plasmas

Abstract

Helixes and chiralities are ubiquitous in nature and closely related to the origin of life, but the spontaneous assembly of such patterns has rarely been realized in low-temperature plasma jets which have numerous applications in biomedical engineering and materials processing. Recently chiral plasma plumes have been generated in the absence of any asymmetric factor. Under the condition of specific pulse DC discharge parameters, the discharge channels that originally propagated along a straight line turn into three dimensional helical plasma discharge channels spontaneously. And the pitch of the helixes can be guided by the external coils outside dielectric tubes in experiments. In this paper, we apply the finite element analysis method to simulate the electrostatic field of the chiral plasma guided by external coils. The effects of initial electric field and surface charges for the formation of the chiral plasma plumes are discussed respectively. These results have important implications for the production of chiral pharmaceuticals and nano-materials.

Keywords

• Dielectric breakdown
• electrostatic analysis
• plasma sources
• chiralities