Dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs) typically operate in the filamentary regime and thus exhibit great spatial and temporal non-uniformity. In order to optimize DBDs for various applications, such as in plasma catalysis, more fundamental insight is needed. Here, we consider how the millions of microdischarges, characteristic for a DBD, influence individual gas molecules. We use a Monte Carlo approach to determine the number of microdischarges to which a single molecule would be exposed, by means of particle tracing simulations through a full-scale packed bed DBD reactor, as well as an empty DBD reactor. We find that the fraction of microdischarges to which the molecules are exposed can be approximated as the microdischarge volume over the entire reactor gas volume. The use of this concept provides good agreement between a plasma-catalytic kinetics model and experiments for plasma-catalytic NH₃ synthesis. We also show that the concept of the fraction of microdischarges indicates the efficiency by which the plasma power is transferred to the gas molecules. This generalised concept is also applicable for other spatially and temporally non-uniform plasmas.

介电势垒放电（DBD）通常在丝状状态下工作，因此表现出极大的空间和时间不均匀性。为了针对各种应用优化DBD，例如在等离子体催化中，需要更多的基础知识。在这里，我们考虑DBD的数百万个微放电如何影响单个气体分子。我们使用蒙特卡洛方法，通过全尺寸填充床DBD反应器和空DBD反应器的颗粒追踪模拟，确定单个分子将暴露的微放电数量。我们发现分子所暴露的微放电的比例可以近似为整个反应器气体体积上的微放电体积。₃综合。我们还表明，微放电分数的概念表明等离子功率转移到气体分子的效率。该概括的概念也适用于其他在空间和时间上不均匀的等离子体。