Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet Composed of Three Electrodes: Application to Tooth Bleaching

Abstract

Three‐electrode plasma jet system consisting of a perforated dielectric tube with two outer and one floating inner electrodes was developed and employed for tooth bleaching. Lowered gas breakdown voltage and increased discharge current were achieved by using the floating inner electrode. Optical emission spectra analysis showed that the rotational temperature of the second positive nitrogen bands was ≈290 K and vibrational temperature was ≈2 500 K, which means this plasma is in highly non‐quilibrium state and nonthermal. The presence of excited He, N2, N 2+ and O in the plasma plume was revealed. The plasma jet was used in combination with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to remove stains from extracted teeth stained by either coffee or red wine. Combining the plasma jet and H2O2 improved the bleaching efficacy by a factor of 3.1 (coffee) and 3.7 (red wine) compared with using H2O2 alone.

Low temperature atmospheric pressure plasma sources for microbial decontamination

“…Likewise, the small dimensions of the blown out discharge are advantageous for the precise treatment of sensitive spots. Thus, APPJs are often used for biomedical applications (Lee et al, 2010;Daeschlein et al, 2010). In parallel, the small spot size is a disadvantage for a homogeneous treatment of large areas, too.…”

“…The inactivation of microorganisms and the removal of biological hazardous contaminants is generally of great interest not only for the conditioning of surgical instruments but also plays a substantial role in the entire field of life science (Moreau et al, 2008;Wan et al, 2009). This varies from microbicidal treatment of food or food containing enclosures, the prevention or cure of infectious diseases, the bleaching of teeth, the treatment of finger nails for improved adhesion, the installation of appropriate hygiene strategies, the sterilization of spacecrafts up to the use of plasmas sources for medical applications like wound disinfection or stimulus for wound healing Weltmann et al, 2008a;Lee et al, 2010;Cooper et al, 2007;Kaemling et al, 2005;Weltmann et al, 2010). Nevertheless, the sterilization of medical devices is still a main topic.…”

Jet‐to‐jet interactions in atmospheric‐pressure plasma jet arrays for surface processing

“…Therefore, APPJ is suitable for potential applications in materials processing, plasma biomedicine, surface decontamination, and thin film deposition. [5][6][7][8][9] However, the treatment area of a typical single plasma jet is less than 1 cm 2 due to the confinement of the structure of the plasma jet devices. This is one important factor to limit the applications of APPJ.…”

Inactivation of Aspergillus flavus spores in a sealed package by cold plasma streamers

“…Limitations in conventional sterilization methods have motivated the search for novel sterilization methods. In recent years, plasmas have various promising applications such as treatment of mammalian and cancerous cells [16], sterilization [8], bacteria inactivation [25], surface modification of Raw and Frit glazes [11], silicon rubber surface modification [26], protein destruction [6] blood coagulations [17], treatment of living tissue [7], wound care [21], teeth bleaching [19], and treatment of dental diseases [15].…”