Townsend discharge

The Townsend discharge is a gas ionization process

where free electrons, accelerated by a suciently strong
electric eld, give rise to electrical conduction through
a gas by avalanche multiplication caused by the ionization of molecules by ion impact. When the number of
free charges drops or the electric eld weakens, the phenomenon ceases.

of electrons reaching the anode is equal to the number

of collisions, plus the single initiating free electron. The
limit to the multiplication in an electron avalanche is
known as the Raether limit.

The Townsend avalanche can have a large range of current densities. In common gas-lled tubes, such as those
used as gaseous ionization detectors, magnitudes of curThe Townsend discharge is named after John Sealy rents owing during this process can range from about
Townsend, who discovered the fundamental ionization 1018 amperes to about 105 amperes.
mechanism by his work between 1897 and 1901. It is
also known as a Townsend avalanche.

2 Quantitative description of the

phenomenon
General description of the phenomenon
The basic setup of Townsends early experiments investigating ionization discharges in gases consisted of planar parallel plates forming two sides of a chamber lled
with a gas. A direct current high voltage source was connected between the plates, the lower voltage plate being the cathode while the other was the anode. Forcing
the cathode to emit electrons using the photoelectric effect, by irradiating it for example with an X-ray source,
Townsend found that the current I owing through the
chamber depends on the electric eld between the plates
in such a way that gas ions seemed to multiply as they
moved between them. He observed currents varying exponentially over ten or more orders of magnitude with a
constant applied voltage when the distance between the
plates was varied. He also discovered the importance
of the pressure of the gaseous medium, and was able to
generate ions in gases at low pressure with a much lower
voltage than that required to generate a spark. This overturned conventional thinking about the amount of current
that an irradiated gas could conduct.[2]

Avalanche eect between two electrodes. The original ionisation event liberates one electron, and each subsequent collision
liberates a further electron, so two electrons emerge from each
collision: the ionising electron and the liberated electron.

The avalanche is a cascade reaction involving electrons in

The experimental data obtained from his experiments are
a region with a suciently high electric eld in a gaseous
described by the following formula
medium that can be ionized, such as air. Following an
original ionisation event, due to such as ionising radiation, the positive ion drifts towards the cathode, while the I
= e n d ,
free electron drifts towards the anode of the device. If the
I0
electric eld is strong enough, the free electron gains sufcient energy to liberate a further electron when it next where
collides with another molecule. The two free electrons
then travel towards the anode and gain sucient energy
I is the current owing in the device,
from the electric eld to cause impact ionisation when the
next collisions occur; and so on. This process is eec I0 is the photoelectric current generated at the
tively a chain reaction of electron generation; it depends
cathode surface,
on the free electrons gaining sucient energy between
e is Eulers number
collisions to sustain the avalanche.[1] The total number
1

3
n is the rst Townsend ionization coecient, expressing the number of ion pairs generated per unit
length (e.g. meter) by a negative ion (anion) moving
from cathode to anode,

CONDITIONS

be used to describe the same experimental results. Other

formulas describing various intermediate behaviors are
found in the literature, particularly in reference 1 and citations therein.

d is the distance between the plates of the device.

3 Conditions
Dark Discharge

Gas ionization caused by motion of

positive ions

Arc

800

B'

600

E
F

400
200

2.1

Glow Discharge

1000

Voltage (V)

The almost constant voltage between the plates is equal to

the breakdown voltage needed to create a self-sustaining
avalanche: it decreases when the current reaches the glow
discharge regime. Subsequent experiments revealed that
the current I rises faster than predicted by the above formula as the distance d increases: two dierent eects
were considered in order to explain the physics of the
phenomenon and to be able to do a precise quantitative
calculation.

A'
1015

H
G
J

A
1010
105
Current (A)

10 0

Townsend put forward the hypothesis that positive ions

also produce ion pairs, introducing a coecient p expressing the number of ion pairs generated per unit length
by a positive ion (cation) moving from anode to cathode.
The following formula was found

Voltage-current characteristics of electrical discharge in neon at

1 torr, with two planar electrodes separated by 50 cm.
A: random pulses by cosmic radiation
B: saturation current
C: avalanche Townsend discharge
D: self-sustained Townsend discharge
E: unstable region: corona discharge
I
(n p )e(n p )d
I
eF:n dsub-normal glow discharge
=
=
=
G: normal
dglow discharge
I0
I0
1 (p /
n p e(n p )d
n )e n
H: abnormal glow discharge
since p n , in very good agreement with experi- I: unstable region: glow-arc transition
J: electric arc
ments.
K: electric arc
The rst Townsend coecient ( ), also known as rst A-D region: dark discharge; ionization occurs, current below
Townsend avalanche coecient is a term used where 10 microamps.
secondary ionization occurs because the primary ioniza- F-H region: glow discharge; the plasma emits a faint glow.
tion electrons gain sucient energy from the accelerating I-K region: arc discharge; larges amounts of radiation proelectric eld, or from the original ionizing particle. The duced.

coecient gives the number of secondary electrons proA Townsend discharge can be sustained only over a limduced by primary electron per unit path length.
ited range of gas pressure and electric eld intensity. The
accompanying plot shows the variation of voltage drop
2.2 Cathode emission caused by impact of and the dierent operating regions for a gas-lled tube
with a constant pressure, but a varying current between
ions
its electrodes. The Townsend avalanche phenomena ocTownsend, Holst and Oosterhuis also put forward an al- curs on the sloping plateau B-D. Beyond D the ionisation
ternative hypothesis, considering the augmented emission is sustained.
of electrons by the cathode caused by impact of positive At higher pressures, discharges occur more rapidly than
ions. This introduced Townsends second ionization coef- the calculated time for ions to traverse the gap between
cient i ; the average number of electrons released from electrodes, and the streamer theory of spark discharge of
a surface by an incident positive ion, according to the fol- Raether, Meek and Loeb is applicable. In highly nonlowing formula:
uniform electric elds, the corona discharge process is
I
e n d
=
.
I0
1 i (en d 1)

applicable. See Electron avalanche for further description of these mechanisms.

Discharges in vacuum require vaporization and ionization

of electrode atoms. An arc can be initiated without a
These two formulas may be thought as describing limiting preliminary Townsend discharge; for example when eleccases of the eective behavior of the process: either can trodes touch and are then separated.

4.3

Ionising radiation detectors

Applications

4.1

3
photoelectric charge generated by incident radiation (visible light or not) on the cathode: achievable current is
typically 10~20 times greater respect to that generated
by vacuum phototubes.

Gas-discharge tubes

The starting of Townsend discharge sets the upper limit to

the blocking voltage a glow discharge gas-lled tube can 4.3
withstand this limit is the Townsend discharge breakdown
voltage also called ignition voltage of the tube.

Ionising radiation detectors

Neon lamp/cold-cathode gas diode relaxation oscillator

The occurrence of Townsend discharge, leading to glow

discharge breakdown shapes the current-voltage characteristic of a gas discharge tube such as a neon lamp in a
way such that it has a negative dierential resistance region of the S-type. The negative resistance can be used
to generate electrical oscillations and waveforms, as in the
relaxation oscillator whose schematic is shown in the picture on the right. The sawtooth shaped oscillation generated has frequency

f
=

1
GLOW
R1 C1 ln VV11V
VTWN

where
VGLOW is the glow discharge breakdown
voltage,
VTWN is the Townsend
breakdown voltage,

discharge

C1 , R1 and V1 are respectively the

capacitance, the resistance and the supply
voltage of the circuit.
Since temperature and time stability of the
characteristics of gas diodes and neon lamps is
low, and also the statistical dispersion of breakdown voltages is high, the above formula can
only give a qualitative indication of what the
real frequency of oscillation is.

Plot of variation of ionisation current against applied voltage for

a co-axial wire cylinder gaseous radiation detector.

Townsend avalanche discharges are fundamental to the

operation of gaseous ionization detectors such as the
GeigerMller tube and the proportional counter in either
detecting ionizing radiation or measuring its energy. The
incident radiation will ionise atoms or molecules in the
gaseous medium to produce ion pairs, but dierent use
is made by each detector type of the resultant avalanche
eects.
In the case of a GM tube the high electric eld strength
is sucient to cause complete ionisation of the ll gas
surrounding the anode from the initial creation of just one
ion pair. The GM tube output carries information that the
event has occurred, but no information about the energy
of the incident radiation.[1]
In the case of proportional counters, multiple creation of
ion pairs occurs in the ion drift region near the cathode. The electric eld and chamber geometries are selected so that an avalanche region is created in the immediate proximity of the anode. A negative ion drifting towards the anode enters this region and creates a localised avalanche that is independent of those from other
ion pairs, but which can still provide a multiplication effect. In this way spectroscopic information on the energy
of the incident radiation is available by the magnitude of
the output pulse from each initiating event.[1]

The accompanying plot shows the variation of ionisation

current for a co-axial cylinder system. In the ion chamber
region, there are no avalanches and the applied voltage
4.2 Gas phototubes
only serves to move the ions towards the electrodes to prevent re-combination. In the proportional region, localised
Avalanche multiplication during Townsend discharge avalanches occur in the gas space immediately round the
is naturally used in gas phototubes, to amplify the anode which are numerically proportional to the number

of original ionising events. Increasing the voltage further

increases the number of avalanches until the Geiger region is reached where the full volume of the ll gas around
the anodes ionised, and all proportional energy information is lost.[1] Beyond the Geiger region the gas is in continuous discharge owing to the high electric eld strength.

See also
Avalanche breakdown
Electric arc
Electric discharge in gases
Field electron emission
Paschens law
Photoelectric eect
Townsend (unit)

Notes

[1] Glenn F Knoll. Radiation Detection and Measurement,

third edition 2000. John Wiley and sons, ISBN 0-47107338-5
[2] John Sealy Edward Townsend. 1868-1957 by A. von Engel. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 1957 3, 256-272

References
Little, P.F. (1956). Secondary eects. In
Flgge, Siegfried. Electron-emission Gas discharges I. Handbuch der Physik (Encyclopedia
of Physics) XXI. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York:
Springer-Verlag. pp. 574663..
James W Gewartowski and Hugh Alexander Watson (1965). Principles of Electron Tubes: Including
Grid-controlled Tubes, Microwave Tubes and Gas
Tubes. D. Van Nostrand Co, Inc.
Herbert J. Reich (1939, 1944). Theory and applications of electron tubes. McGraw-Hill Co, Inc. Check
date values in: |date= (help) Chapter 11 "Electrical
conduction in gases" and chapter 12 "Glow- and Arcdischarge tubes and circuits".
E.Kuel, W.S. Zaengl, J.Kuel (2004). High
Voltage Engineering Fundamentals, Second edition.
Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 0-7506-3634-3.

EXTERNAL LINKS

8 External links
Simulation showing electron paths during avalanche

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