IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 43, NO. 3, MARCH 2015
701
Guest Editorial The Second Special Issue on Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jets and Their Applications
I
T HAS been about two and a half years since the publication of the first IEEE Special Issue dedicated to the “Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jets and Their Applications” in November 2012. Fig. 1 shows the publications on the atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) in the last decade from Web of Science. It clearly shows that this topic has been significantly grown in the past one decade and is still growing. As we know, one of the emerging applications of plasma jets is plasma medicine, which is another one of the fastest growing field in low-temperature plasmas in the past decade. A plasma jet can directly interact with bio objects or the afterglow of the plasma jet interacts with bio objects as illustrated in Fig. 2. When a plasma jet is used to treat bio objects, the bio objects are covered by a thin layer of liquid in most cases. When the afterglow of a plasma jet interacts with bio objects, the main reactive species are relative long lifetime radicals such as OH, O, O3 , NO, and some metastable molecular such as O2 (a) and N2 (A) (these metastable state molecular does not seem to play a direct role in the inaction with bio objects, but they play an important role in the generation of radicals such as OH, O, and O3 ). On the other hand, when a plasma jet directly interacts with bio objects, besides the relative long lifetime radicals mentioned above, the short-time radicals including electrons, various ions, and some excited species could also play some roles in the treatment of bio objects. For pulsed discharge plasma, the relative long lifetime radicals also play important role for the treatment of bio objects even for the direct treatment. As can be seen from Fig. 2, research on plasma treatment of bio objects can be simply divided into four branches, including: 1) plasma physics; 2) plasma chemistry; 3) solution chemistry; and 4) biochemistry. After one decade’s studies, we know much more about the physics of plasma jets, including the dynamics of plasma bullets, the role of photoionization, the role of residual charges, and so on. Thanks to the modern computer simulation technology and the advanced plasma diagnostics methods such as Laser-induced fluorescence, Twophoton absorption laser-induced fluorescence, Cavity ring down spectroscopy, Ultraviolet-visible absorption, Blackbody absorption, and Fourier-transform infrared, we have also made significant progress inplasma chemistry in the afterglow. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPS.2015.2398491
Fig. 1.
Publications of APPJ from Web of Science.
Fig. 2.
Schematic of a typical plasma jet interaction with bio objects.
On the contrary, we only know a little bit about solution chemistry and even less about biochemistry, which are very complicated and are actually beyond the knowledge of most plasma scientists. However, to understand the effect of plasma jets on bio objects, we need to acquire knowledge in these fields, on the one hand. On the other hand, it is actually more important and essential for us to reach out in the next decade, to recruit researchers who have a background in solution chemistry, radical chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and medical doctors to the field of plasma medicine, which will definitely significantly drive us to make progress in plasma medicine. This Special Issue reflects the latest progress in APPJs and their applications. A total of 12 papers in this Special
0093-3813 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
702
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 43, NO. 3, MARCH 2015
Issue cover the topic of generation, diagnostics, modeling, and various applications of APPJs. The diversity of the research in this area can easily be seen in this Special Issue, and we are glad to share with you the happiness of reading many authors’ stories of successes. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Guest Editors would like to thank Dr. S. Gitomer, the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON P LASMA S CIENCE, for the support and helpful recommendations, and all the reviewers for their evaluation of the merit of the manuscripts, their helpful advice to the authors, and their interactions with the Guest Editors. In addition, the Guest Editors would also like to thank all the authors who submitted their manuscripts and were willing to publish their new results,
developments, methods, and concepts in this Special Issue. Without their contribution, this Special Issue would not be possible. X INPEI L U, Guest Editor State Key Laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Engineering and Technology Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China E-mail:
[email protected] A LEXANDER F RIDMAN, Guest Editor Department of Mechanical Engineering Drexel University E-mail:
[email protected]
XinPei Lu (SM’–) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2001. He was with Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA, from 2002 to 2006, as a Research Associate. He joined the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in 2007, where he is currently a Professor (ChangJiang Scholar) with the College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He has authored or co-authored about 100 peer-reviewed journal articles with a citation of about 3000 and holds six patents in these areas. His current research interests include low-temperature plasma sources and their biomedical applications, modeling of low-temperature plasmas, and plasma diagnostics. He has served as a Guest Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON P LASMA S CIENCE for many times and as the Session Chair at the International Conference on Plasma Science since 2007. He and P. Chu co-edited the book titled Low-Temperature Plasma Technology: Methods and Applications (CRC Press 2013). He was asked to give plenary/invited talk in many international conferences, including the IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science.
Alexander Fridman is currently a John A. Nyheim Chair Professor with Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, and the Director with the Drexel Plasma Institute, Camden, NJ, USA. His research focuses on plasma medicine, plasma approaches to material treatment, fuel conversion, and environmental control. He has over 30 years of plasma research in national laboratories and Universities of Russia, France, and the USA. He has authored six books and 400 papers, and received numerous awards, including S. Kaplan Distinguished Professorship in Chemical Kinetics and Energy Systems, G. Soros Distinguished Professorship in Physics, and the State Prize of the Russia for the discovery of selective stimulation of chemical processes in nonthermal plasma.
