UCLA researchers think the use of plasma jets could promise significant advances in the battle against the spread of COVID-19.
The modeling presented in June in Physics of Fluids shows strains of the novel coronavirus on surfaces such as metal, fabric, and plastic destroyed in as little as 30 seconds of argon-fed, cold atmospheric plasma therapy.
To spray surfaces that were treated with SARS-CoV-2 cultures, the researchers used an ambient pressure plasma jet they constructed with a 3-D printer. Plastic, concrete, cardboard, soccer, football, and baseball leather is part of the surfaces.
In less than three minutes, the plasma spray fed by argon killed all the coronaviruses on the six surfaces, and after 30 seconds, most of the viruses were dead. Additional tests found that face masks killed the virus on cotton at comparable periods.
For many hours, the novel coronavirus will stay contagious on surfaces. Author Richard E. Wirz said the results indicate tremendous promise for plasma usage in halting the virus's propagation period.
"This is only the beginning," Wirz said. "We are very confident and have very high expectations for plasma in future work. In the future, a lot of answers for the scientific community will come from plasma."
What is Plasma?
Plasma is one of the four essential states of matter formed by heating or subjecting a neutral gas to a powerful electromagnetic field. Cold atmosphere plasma, a comparatively recent science, is an ionized, near-room-temperature gas that has proved successful in curing chemotherapy, wound healing, dentistry, and other medical applications.
The authors conducted a similar helium-fed plasma coronavirus examination, but the helium was not successful, even for up to five minutes of therapy.
In contrast with argon, the writers assume this was attributed to lower reactive oxygen and reactive nitrogen concentrations by utilizing helium-fed coal.
Zhitong Chen said the writers design a portable system that could be commonly used to treat coronavirus surfaces with plasma. He said that it is a better, cleaner alternative than chemicals or other therapies.
"Everything we use comes from the air," he said. "Air and electricity: It's a very healthy treatment with no side effects."
Other experiments on the impact of plasma on bacteria and viruses have shown damage to the virus's outer envelope that may involve proteins essential for host cell binding.
How Effective is Plasma?
Another team developed a plasma filter last year that could sterilize 99 percent of viruses in the air. As air passes through holes in a bed of borosilicate glass beads in their system, the reactive atoms that make up the plasma are oxidized. It damages virus particles, leaving them with a drastically decreased capacity to infect us.
There's always a way to go from proof of principle to a system that we will all use, of course. But Wirz and his team are now trying to create a computer like this.
The researchers hope that the advantages of plasma will be made accessible to citizens around the planet, like those seen in this report.
"These results also suggest that cold plasma should be investigated for the inactivation of aerosol-borne SARS-CoV-2," the Wirz and colleagues wrote in their paper.
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