Summary
Background
Onychomycosis affects almost 6% of the world population. Topical azoles and systemic antifungal agents are of low efficacy and can have undesirable side effects. An effective, non‐invasive therapy for onychomycosis is an unmet clinical need.
Objective
Determine the efficacy threshold of non‐thermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP) to treat onychomycosis in an in vitro model.
Methods
A novel toe/nail‐plate model using cadaver nails and agarose media inoculated with Candida albicans was exposed to a range of NTAP doses.
Results
Direct exposure of C albicans and Trichophyton mentagrophytes to 12 minutes of NTAP results in complete killing at doses of 39 and 15 kPulses, respectively. Onset of reduced viability of C albicans to NTAP treatment through the nail plate occurs at 64 kPulses with 10× and 100× reduction at 212 and 550 kPulses, respectively.
Conclusions
NTAP is an effective, non‐invasive therapeutic approach to onychomycosis that should be evaluated in a clinical setting.
Flat, thin and lightweight lamps providing spatially uniform and dimmable illumination from active areas as large as 400 cm2 are being developed for general illumination and specialty applications. Comprising an array of low-temperature, nonequilibrium microplasmas driven by a dielectric barrier structure and operating at pressures of typically 400–700 Torr, these lamps have a packaged thickness <4 mm and yet produce luminance values beyond 26 000 cd m−2 with a luminous efficacy approaching 30 lm W−1. Third generation lamps, presently in limited production, offer a correlated colour temperature in the 3000–4100 K interval and a colour rendering index of 80. Current lamps employ Xe2 (λ ∼ 172 nm) as the primary emitter photoexciting a mixture of phosphors, and the pressure dependence of the wavelength-integrated fluorescence from the electronically excited dimer has been investigated with a vacuum ultraviolet spectrometer. In contrast to other promising lighting technologies, the decline in luminous efficacy of microplasma lamps with increasing power delivered to the lamp is small. For a 6 × 6 inch2 (∼225 cm2) lamp, efficacy falls <16% when the radiant output (luminance) is raised from 2000 cd m−2 to > 10 000 cd m−2.
The effects on ion-acoustic wave propagation caused by the introduction of a large biased metal plate close to and parallel to the separation grid in the target chamber of a double plasma machine are experimentally examined. It is found that the biased plate can re-excite ion-acoustic waves and can act as an externally controlled phase shifter.
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