Breakdown in gas mixtures:

Penning Effect
Lec # 10
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Introduction
• Paschen’s Law for the sparking potential is valid for the any gas alone
used as insulating medium between the electrodes.
• When pure single gas is mixed with any other gas, the breakdown
characteristics tends to change.
• The mixture yields the characteristics that belongs to neither of the
individual gas used in mixture.
• Hence Paschen’s law is not valid in any gaseous mixtures, the
outstanding example is neon-argon mixture.
Penning Mixture
• Penning mixture (named after Franc Michel Penning) is a mixture of
gases used in electric lighting.
• The mixture tends to breakdown and conduct at lower voltages that
make it suitable to be used in neon signs.
• In Penning mixture one inert gas is mixed with a minute amount of
other (quench) gas having lower ionization potential.
• The mixture is easily ionized at lower potentials (some at 220v/110v)
causing the tubes to become conductive and produce light.
Penning Effect
• In mixture, the inert gas must possess higher ionizing potential than
the quenching gas.
• Inert gases tend to come in metastable (excited state) when subjected
to electric stress (i.e. 2-8 to 2-7-1 electron configuration in Neon) .
• The energy of the excited but neutral noble gas atoms then can ionize
the quench gas particles by energy transfer via collisions, this
phenomenon is known as penning effect.
• Penning effect is due to penning ionization.
Penning effect in Neon-Argon mixture
• Admixture of Argon in Neon reduces the breakdown strength below
that of pure Argon or Neon.
• The reason for lowering breakdown voltage is that the lowest excited
state of Neon is metastable and its excitation potential (16eV) is 0.9eV
greater than the ionization potential of Argon.
• The metastable atoms have a long life in neon gas, and on hitting
Argon atoms, there is very high probability of ionizing them.
• Thus the breakdown occurs and the mixture of Neon-Argon becomes
conductive.
Applications of Penning effect
• Glow discharge:
A glow discharge is a plasma formed by the passage
of electric current through a gas. It is often created by applying a
voltage between two electrodes in a glass tube containing a low-
pressure gas. When the voltage exceeds a value called the
striking voltage, the gas ionization becomes self-sustaining, and the
tube glows with a colored light. The color depends on the gas used.
Glow discharges are used as a source of light in devices such as
neon lights, fluorescent lamps, and plasma-screen televisions.
Analyzing the light produced with spectroscopy can reveal information
about the atomic interactions in the gas, so glow discharges are used in
plasma physics and analytical chemistry.
Applications of Penning effect
• Fluorescent lamps:
Fluorescent lamp uses low pressure Argon gas with
the mercury vapors in the tube. In fluorescent lamps the excited atoms
of argon contribute effectively to ionize neutral mercury by collisions.
As a result of this contribution, the breakdown voltage of the
fluorescent lamp is lowered, and the lamp can made to operate at
lower input voltage.
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