Nonthermal decontamination of biological media by atmospheric-pressure plasmas: review, analysis, and prospects

Although the use of an electrical discharge to disinfect water was suggested and applied more than a hundred years ago, basic and applied research on the interaction of plasmas with biological media was extensively carried out only relatively recently. In this context, a review of various works on the germicidal effects of atmospheric pressure, "cold" plasmas, is presented. The nonequilibrium discharge devices discussed in this review, which have been used in biological applications by various investigators, are the corona discharge, the diffuse dielectric-barrier discharge, the resistive barrier discharge, and the atmospheric-pressure plasma jet. Analysis of the inactivation kinetics for various bacteria…