Atmospheric-pressure ionization: New approaches and applications for plasmas in contact with liquids

Historically, gas discharges have been difficult to stabilize at atmospheric pressure, and this has confined them to operation at low pressure under vacuum conditions. However, recent advances in plasma technology have enabled stable high pressure gas discharges up to and even exceeding atmospheric pressure. One significant advantage of operating at atmospheric pressure is that the plasma can be brought into contact with non-conventional substrates, especially soft materials such as plastics, biological tissue, and aqueous solutions. This last example is of prime interest as plasma/liquid interactions have a number of important implications in applications ranging from water purification to plasma medicine. In this paper, recent work studying the impact of electrons in the plasma inducing reactions in aqueous solutions is discussed. These studies include measurements of the bulk solution as the electrons induce long-lived species as well as interfacial measurements directly at the plasma/liquid interface to probe the behaviour of electrons traversing from the plasma into the liquid. (paper)