Incorporating a Series Resistor into Microscale Gas Breakdown Theory

While gas breakdown has historically been considered as governed by Townsend avalanche and described mathematically by Paschen’s law, the mechanism changes for microscale gaps at atmospheric pressure 1 . Under these conditions, the electric field becomes sufficiently strong to strip electrons from the gap by field emission. Instead of the breakdown voltage being characterized by a minimum value with decreasing gap distance, the breakdown voltage instead continues to decrease linearly due to this field emission contribution 1 .