Plasma decontamination at atmospheric pressure - basics and applications

Plasma sources, driven at atmospheric pressure gain more and more interest due to the technological advantages (avoidance of vacuum devices and batch processing). Especially nonthermal plasmas at atmospheric pressure for the antimicrobial treatment of heat sensitive materials are of rapidly growing interest. However, the realisation of industrial plasma-based decontamination or sterilisation technology remains a great challenge. This is due to the fact that an antimicrobial treatment process needs to consider all properties of the product to be treated as well as the requirements of the complete process and all boundary conditions. First the requirements for plasma-decontamination and plasma-sterilization will be discussed. Advantages and disadvantages regarding present no-plasma decontamination processes will be indicated. The applicability of plasma-based processes for the antimicrobial treatment on selected, heat sensitive products will be demonstrated. Modular and selective plasma sources will be used to match the specific requirements regarding decontamination of medical products. Nearly any complex 3-dimensional structure can be treated by the plasma sources developed. In particular catheters for intracardial electrophysiological studies as well as the antimicrobial treatment process of hollow packaging for pharmaceutical products, namely PET- bottles, will be discussed. Furthermore the contribution will report on attempts and difficulties concerning the adaptation of the plasma sources on such real products. Optical emission spectroscopy of the plasma sources and micro-biological tests will complete the investigation.