Special issue on selected papers from HVDP 2016

This special issue contains selected papers from the 2016 National Conference on
High Voltage and Discharge Plasmas (HVDP), which was hosted by the Plasmas
and their Applications Committee, China Electrotechnical Society, and held in
Beijing, China, on 26 and 27 November 2016. The conference was attended by
over 430 delegates from 110 universities, research institutes and enterprises. In
total, 280 abstracts and 132 full papers have been submitted, giving a wonderful
assembly of technical contributions from around China.
Discharge plasmas have attracted increasing interest from both fundamental
and applied points of view, because of the unique advantages and promising
applications in fields such as energy, environment, materials, medicine etc.
Significant advances in the related fundamentals and applications of discharge
plasmas including theory, modeling and simulation, measurement and diagnostic
techniques, plasma sources and applications have progressed concurrently during
the past two decades. Discharge plasmas and applications have become increasingly
interdisciplinary fields closely related to plasma physics and chemistry,
pulsed power technology and high voltage insulation. It has been noticed that
these related topics are a rapidly evolving field, which is a point of focus in many
international conferences. The HVDP conference was first held in 2016, and will
be held biennially (in even-numbered years). The primary purpose of the HVDP
conference was to provide a platform for the discussion, interchange, and presentation
of research on discharge plasma and applications. Besides this, the
conference sought to promote the interaction between discharge plasma
researchers and facilitate interactions between the fields of discharge plasmas and
the other related interdisciplinary research areas.
Seventeen papers from the 2016 HVDP conference appear in this special issue
covering the topics of generation, diagnostics, and various applications of
discharge plasmas. The objective of this special issue is to bring the most up-todate
developments reported at the HVDP conference to the readership of Plasma
Science and Technology (PST). Contributions cover a variety of discharge plasma
technologies and include papers discussing various experimental diagnostics for
discharge plasma and related pulsed power technologies. We have also included
several papers on the applications of discharge plasmas to VOC and water
purification/treatment, and plasma treatment for coating and surface modifications.
The quality of the research in this area can easily be seen in this special
issue, and we hope it will help to advance our knowledge of discharge plasma and
cultivate future scientific collaboration among those who participated in the
HVDP conference.
As Guest Editors, we would like to thank all the authors for their excellent
papers in this special issue. We also thank the anonymous referees for their time
spent in providing careful and thoughtful comments on the manuscripts. The guest
editors would like to thank the PST journal and Editor, Dr Ping Xu, for his support
and help with details pertaining to the preparation of this special issue. Special
thanks go to the conference chairman of HVDP, Professor Tao Shao, Institute ofElectrical Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences, for his hard work in making
the HVDP conference a success and his interactions with the Editor and Guest
Editors. We hope this special issue will encourage the publication of similarly
high-quality papers from future HVDP conferences. We look forward to the
continued success of the next HVDP conference!