Barrier discharge excimer lamp

Barrier discharge excimer lamp. (Courtesy of Heraeus Noblelight.) 

IR radiation is not produced, and therefore the lamps are relatively cold, with the surface temperatures being in the range 35-40°C (95-104°F).i2 This makes them suitable for heat-sensifive substrates. 

In addition to the low surface femperature, excimer lamps have fhe advantage that they start immediately, so they can be switched on and off as needed. There is no need for sfandby function and for a shuffer system, so no movable parts are necessary on the radiation head. Both continuous and pulse mode operation is possible. The lamps are very compact, which is particularly important for the printing industry, because it is possible to retrofit them into the existing process. 

The excimer curing system of this design consists of the following componenfs  

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Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of the barrier-discharge excimer lamp.

Excimer lamp Dielectric barrier (silent) discharge 172,222, 308 1-10 UV curing. Major R D... 

Currently, there are two types of commercial excimer lamps barrier-discharge- and microwave-driven lamps. 

FIGU RE 3.4 Schematic showing complete system of a barrier-discharge-driven excimer lamp (courtesy of Heraeus Noblelight). 

An excimer lamp has dual quartz-tube structure, where a metal electrode is set at the inner side of the inner tube, and a mesh-type metal electrode is placed at the outside of the outer tube as shown in Fig. 5. When we apply ac high voltage between two electrodes, the dielectric barrier discharge ignites between two dielectric materials, and reaches an excimer state instantaneously by the excitation of atoms of a filling gas. Then the excimer light is emitted by the... 

The incoherent excimer radiation from a dielectric barrier discharge (silent discharge), operating in pure xenon, gas mixtures of krypton/chlorine, and xenon/chlorine, provides intense narrow-band radiation. More details about the excimer UV sources can be found in the literature [236, 237]. As irradiation sources a XeCl (308 nm), a KrCl (222 nm), and a Xe2 (172 nm) excimer lamp were selected. Excimer lamps based on fluorine-containing excimers are difficult to operate, due to etching of the quartz housing by the F2. 

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