Characterization of a plasma source for biomedical applications by electrical, optical, and chemical measurements

Abstract

This paper reports the characterization of a low‐power, atmospheric pressure plasma source developed for and successfully tested in applications of plasma medicine. The source produces plasma by ionizing a helium flow containing traces of air. The effluent gas is thus enriched in reactive oxygen and nitrogen species as well as helium metastable excited states. Electrical measurements, Schlieren imaging, OES and various chemical analyses and probes enabled us to fully characterize the plasma source and to determine some fundamental parameters for treating living samples such as the power feeding the discharge, the optimal source to target distance, the maximum exposure time, and to identify the major chemical species responsible for the biological action on exposed living matter.

Transdermal cold atmospheric plasma-mediated immune checkpoint blockade therapy

“…The feeding gas for this study was industrial purity helium (99.996% purity) with a 16.5 L/min gas flow rate. The optical emission spectrum (OES) indicated the generation of both ROS and RNS (21,22), while optical and temperature monitoring confirmed the formation of CAP (SI Appendix, Fig. S2 B-D).…”

Shielding‐gas‐controlled atmospheric pressure plasma jets: Optical emission, reactive oxygen species, and the effect on cancer cells

“…Even though it does not provide information about plasma species in their ground states, it has been reported that their absolute concentrations can be estimated from OES measurements taken with some assumptions using computational modeling . Many recent studies driven by the usefulness of plasma in the medical field have used OES to identify plasma reactive species formed in APPJ and attempted to find a correlation between the formation of these excited species and the biological effects of plasma irradiation . It is important to emphasize here that these biological effects can be not only due to excited plasma species but also to species in their ground states as well as to the synergistic effects of several plasma components .…”

Functional Plasma Polymerized Surfaces for Biosensing

“…Within the past few years, numerous studies on the application of high frequency driven atmospheric-pressure plasma jets (APPJ) for surface modifications or for deposition of thin polymer films appeared. − Recently, the deposition of poly­(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) coatings using APPJ was reported using a novel setup containing an inner capillary through which the monomer vapors were introduced . It was shown that the obtained PMMA films had a radial gradient in surface chemistry, morphology, and thickness, and the coatings properties strongly depended on the monomer flow rate.…”