ABSTRACT
In recent years, plasma applications in medicine have emerged to be a new and fascinating eld. In particular, nonthermal atmospheric pressure (NTAP) plasmas have made possible treatments of heat-sensitive biomaterials and living tissue. e electrons in these plasmas, which have much higher energies than the heavier ions and neutral species, collide with background atoms and molecules causing enhanced levels of dissociation, excitation, and ionization. Reactive neutral species and charged particles, generated by these collisions, interact with the materials under treatment, while the bulk gas remains near room temperature. Among the potential plasma agents for bacterial deactivation, reactive chemical species including reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (NO, NO2) were considered to play crucial roles in the NTAP plasma-induced antimicrobial process (Laroussi 2005; Lu et al. 2008b). Charged particles such as O2− as well as electric elds may also importantly contribute to the antimicrobial process (Babaeva et al. 2012). In comparison, heat and ultraviolet (UV) radiation were not considered to play signicant roles for bacterial inactivation by the NTAP plasmas (Laroussi and Leipold 2004).
