Abstract: The design and the investigations of a new vacunm ultraviolet (VUV) radiation source with continuous spectrum are presented.For enhancing the continuous spectrum intensity,the VUV source is designed to work under conditions of high pressure (0.2~0.9MPa) and short pulses.It is found from experiments that the breakdown voltage of the VUV source with a filling gas of hydrogen id about 8×10³ V and the pulse width 1×10^-7 sec,depending on the filling gas pressure and the electrode separation. The breakdown voltage is also theoretically calculated by the Meek breakdown criterion,and the pulse width by the discharge channel expansion theory,It is found that both are in reasonable agreement with the experimental results.

Key words: vacuum ultraviolet (VUV), light sources, spectrum, light radiation