Decontamination of microorganisms by low-temperature atmospheric pressure microplasma

Development of the plasma sources based on the microwave technique are of increasing interest from industrial point of view [1]. Recently, one of the promising application is biomedical engineering like sterilization, food preservation, cells treatment [2]. This specific area of application requires low temperature atmospheric pressure plasma. Due to this we designed, built and tested experimentally a small, portable and easy to use microwave microplasma source (MmPS) [3, 4]. It has structure of a coaxial line, formed by an inner conductor, made of a brass rod with a tungsten rod top, and outer conductor in the form of a brass cylinder. The MmPS is operated at standard microwave frequency of 2.45 GHz. The generated by MmPS plasma has the form of a microflame forming at the tip of the inner conductor.