Plasma-Based Sterilization

Rapid, safe, and effective sterilization is of the utmost importance when it comes to protecting the public in general and hospital patients in particular. Today, public health institutions face unprecedented challenges due to the advent of heat sensitive reusable medical tools and due to the appearance of heat resistant microorganisms such as prion, the protein which causes Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, more commonly known as mad cow disease. Conventional sterilization methods such as autoclaving and Ethylene Oxide EtO are inadequate in these cases. Non-equilibrium cold plasmas have recently been shown to be a very promising alternative, potentially capable of overcoming the above-mentioned challenges. In addition to not damaging the articles to be sterilized, cold plasmas proved to be very effective due to the synergistic effects of free radicals and UV photons, which interact with the cells of microorganisms on the atomic and molecular levels.