A study on characterization of atmospheric pressure plasma jets according to the driving frequency for biomedical applications

Unique atmospheric pressure plasma devices are designed to investigate the plasma characteristics for various driving frequencies under the same operating conditions. Electrical properties of the plasma, gas temperature, formation of plasma jets, and sterilization efficiency are studied for two different driving frequencies of 13 kHz (low frequency) and 877 MHz (microwave frequency). When compared with low frequency plasma, microwave plasma is found to have better electrical properties such as no electric shock for safety, high discharge current for effective chemical reactions, clean waveform for homogenous plasma, and high power coupling efficiency. Furthermore, microwave plasma leads to effective sterilization which is related to the high intensity of atomic oxygen. One-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation reveals that microwave plasma has substantial electrons in the energy range 2–5 eV (bond dissociation energy), thus electrons in this energy range can produce more atomic oxygen. It shows that the probability of producing high energy ions, which can damage the electrode, is low in microwave plasma.