Title: electric discharge Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - electric discharge DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.08469 Status: current Definition Transmission of electrical current by a plasma in an applied electric field through a normally non-conducting medium. Note An inductively-coupled plasma is a kind of electric discharge. Related Term - inductively-coupled plasma: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08488 Source - PAC, 2021, 93, 647. 'Glossary of methods and terms used in analytical spectroscopy (IUPAC Recommendations 2019)' on page 717 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2019-0203) Other Outputs - html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08469/html - json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08469/json - xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08469/xml Citation: Citation: 'electric discharge' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.08469 License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. Collection: If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. Accessed: 2026-06-28T21:08:06+00:00