Decontamination of Surfaces From Extremophile Organisms Using Nonthermal Atmospheric-Pressure Plasmas

Author

Cooper, Moogega ; Fridman, Gregory ; Staack, David ; Gutsol, Alexander F. ; Vasilets, Victor N. ; Anandan, Shivanthi ; Cho, Young I. ; Fridman, Alexander ; Tsapin, Alexander

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng. & Mech., Drexel Univ., Philadelphia, PA

Volume

37

Issue

6

fYear

2009

fDate

6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

866

Lastpage

871

Abstract

We showed that nonthermal dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma compromises the integrity of the cell membrane of Deinococcus radiodurans, an extremophile organism. In samples of D. radiodurans, which were dried in a laminar flow hood, we observe that DBD plasma exposure resulted in a six-log reduction in CFU (colony-forming unit) count after 30 min of treatment. When the Deinococcus radiodurans cells were suspended in distilled water and treated, it took only 15 s to achieve a four-log reduction of CFU count.

Keywords

biological fluid dynamics; biomembranes; cellular biophysics; discharges (electric); laminar flow; plasma applications; suspensions; Deinococcus radiodurans; cell membrane; colony-forming unit; distilled water; extremophile organisms; four-log reduction; laminar flow hood; nonthermal atmospheric-pressure plasmas; nonthermal dielectric barrier discharge plasma; six-log reduction; surface decontamination; suspension; time 15 s; time 30 min; Atmospheric-pressure discharges; cold plasma; dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs); plasma decontamination; sterilization;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPS.2008.2010618

Filename

4760262