Introduction to Nonthermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma: Physical and Chemical Basis

Plasma medicinePlasmaPlasma bioscience and medicine today is an interdisciplinary division of modern science and technology. It includes fundamental physics essential to develop new plasma sources and its diagnostics applicable for biological applications, clinical treatments, medicine to apply the technology not only on cells but also on the whole organism and medical testing, and finally bioscience and environmental issues. Nonthermal atmospheric pressure plasma can be efficacious in several biological applications such as blood coagulation treatment, sterilization, tissue bioengineering, modification of biomaterials, wound healing, agriculture, food processing, eradication of environmental issues, and various other applications. It is important to note that this chapter explained the safety and stability of plasma devices used for various applications, which is the main concern in this developing field. In the first part, the history of plasma bioscience and medicine area including clinical trials in cancer and other diseases is included. Specifically, in this chapter detailed diagnostic procedures for various plasma sources and plasma-based substances are incorporated. The last section of this chapter described optical emission spectroscopy (OES) for the reactive species detection, measurement of the plasma electron density and temperatures by interferometry and collisional radiative models, and rotational and vibrational temperatures of molecules in plasma gases by using an Boltzman plot from optical spectroscopy, the plasma radical densities by absorption spectroscopic method, and the plasma parameters for industry biomedical plasma products.