Dear Mr. van der Wijngaart:

You asked about breakdown in gases at elevated pressures.  There is a large
body of old work on this topic in relation to high voltage equipment,
written by Peek and by various groups including the old MIT van de Graaff
generator people, including John Trump and (forgot his first name!) Philp.
There is also the marvelous classic by Cobine entitled "Gaseous Conductors"
published by Dover (1958).  It will be in any decent technical university
library.

I am somewhat pessimistic as to your chances of success in locating studies
directly relevant to MEMS.  As you probably know, the Paschen law predicts
some interesting phenomena related to breakdown at small gap spacings.  I
hope my leads will assist you.  Good luck.

Tom Jones


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Thomas B. Jones
Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Rochester
P.O. Box 270126
Rochester, NY  14627-0126    (USA)
phone: 716-275-5233   fax: 716-473-0486
email: jones@ee.rochester.edu
http://www.ee.rochester.edu/~jones
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