Plasma technology used for textile and leather materials treatment is a dry, environmental friendly, and easy to operate method by which surface modification is obtained without altering the bulk properties of the materials. Particularly, nonthermal plasmas are very appropriate due to the fact that most textiles, and especially leathers, are usually heat sensitive. The major objective of this review is to provide a critical update on the present state‐of‐art relating to plasma and its effects on different textiles and leathers. We believe that the discussed subjects are helpful and may be used as an instruction guide for the future developments in the field of plasma‐activated textiles and leathers.

Microwave heating of high loss liquids was performed using two applicator types, a coaxial configuration and a pair of rectangular slot antennas. The temperature profiles in the asheated liquid samples were investigated in real time. The dielectric properties of the samples were measured over a broad band of frequencies at the same temperature value as the highest one reached in the temperature profile. The heating depth in the liquid was compared to the dielectric loss for different samples. These investigations were performed for surface microwave processing in liquid mixtures (living tissues), for extraction applications and medical thermal treatments.

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Summer savory (Satureja hortensis L.) is most often used as a culinary herb, but it also has medicinal benefits. The extracts from control and irradiated savory were obtained by ultrasound extraction for 30 minutes in an ethanol — water (80:20, v/v) mixture. Polyphenolic compounds from savory were identified and characterized by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a photodiode array detector and mass spectrometer. The separation was performed using an Altima C18 column (100×3 mm, 3 μm) and as mobile phase two solvent mixture: A — acetonitrile and B — water-formic acid (99.9:0.1, v/v). Peaks were identified with authentic standards in accordance to retention time, UV spectra and molecular mass. It was identified as caffeic acid, rosmarinic acid, luteolin, naringenin and apigenin. A quantitative determination of polyphenolic compounds was performed applying the external standard method. Our study showed large quantitative differences between the control plant and the irradiated plant.

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This paper describes the design and operation of a low-cost plasma applicator based on a patented, swirled-type dielectric barrier discharge configuration with a treatment width up to 300 mm. Differences from earlier plasma applicators include: blown cylindrical dielectric barrier discharge, combining the functional properties of the plasma jet systems, arc and corona discharge blown in a single type of universal applicator, and the possibility of treating large areas of samples with cold plasma generated in a certain type of specific process gas mixture chosen according to the type of desired effect. We tested the effect of the plasma on a few materials such as cotton and linen fabrics, glass wafers and printing cardboard, proving that the generated plasma can easily make hydrophilic or hydrophobic surfaces. We also tried the plasma’s sterilizing effect on Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. The results suggest that our plasma system can be successfully applied to medical and biological fields as well, where the removal of bacteria and their fragments is required.

Durable biocompatible metal vascular implants are still one of the significant challenges of contemporary medicine. This work presents the preparation of ferromagnetic biomaterials with shape memory in metal strips based on FePd (30 at% Pd) that is either not doped or doped with Ga and Mn, coated with poly(benzofuran-co-arylacetic acid) or polyglutamic acid. The coating of the metal strips with polymers was achieved after the metal surface had been previously treated with open-air cold plasma. The final functionalization was performed to induce anti-thrombogenic/thrombolytic properties in the resulting materials. SEM-EDX microscopy and X-ray photoelectron microscopy (XPS) determined the morphology and composition of the metal strips covered with polymers. In vitro tests of standardized thromboplastin time (PTT) and prothrombin time (PT) were performed to evaluate the thrombogenicity of these biofunctionalized materials for future possible monitoring of the implant in patients.

In this paper, a nonvolatile switch based on n-type floating-gate transistors is described. The switch states are programmed through the memory cell floating-gate voltage, allowing higher levels than the application supply. Furthermore, due to its nonvolatile nature, the power consumption is reduced. The on-state resistance, which does not depend on the supply voltage, is one of the greatest advantages of this type of switch in comparison to conventional switches. This benefit can be successfully exploited in low-voltage applications. The switch on-resistance can be increased without the need for increasing the switch area. The characteristics of the proposed switch were confirmed by the experimental results obtained on a test chip fabricated in a 0.18 µm EEPROM process. Measured on-resistance values between 45 and 70 Ω were obtained for a floating-gate voltage of 6.2 V and input source levels below 2 V. The required programming voltage was 18 V. The maximum off-state leakage current was measured at 5 nA.