Abstract
For plasma treatment of inanimate surfaces and living tissues in medicine, it is important to control plasma–sample interactions and to mitigate non-uniform treatments of usually uneven sample surfaces so that effectiveness of application can be reproduced for different biological samples, relatively independently of their varying surface topologies and material characters. This paper reports a scalable two-dimensional (2D) array of seven cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) jets intended to achieve these two important requirements as well as to address the unique challenge of jet–jet interactions. While the CAP jet array can be configured to interact with a biological sample in either a direct mode (used with an in situ sample) or a remote mode (used as an afterglow), this study focuses on the direct mode. Using a downstream planar electrode as a sample model, the spatial distribution of reactive species and electrons delivered by individual jets of the 2D CAP jet array attains excellent uniformity. Specifically, the spatial variation over 100 μs is 5.6 and 7.9%, respectively, for wavelength-integrated optical emission intensity, and for atomic oxygen emission intensity at 845 nm when the oxygen admixture is 0.5% of the helium carrier gas. It is also shown that the highest emission intensity at 845 nm occurs at O2/He=0.5% under the best jet–jet uniformity conditions for O2/He=0.3–0.7%. These results indicate the potential of 2D CAP jet arrays for uniform treatment and for effective control of jet–jet interactions. Furthermore, spatial uniformity is accompanied by rich dynamics of jet–jet interactions and jet–sample interactions. Of the honeycomb-arranged seven CAP jets, the central jet is strongest in the negative half cycle, whereas the six surrounding jets (of uniform strength) are strongest in the positive half cycle. These dynamic features offer possible insights with which to better control jet–jet interactions and plasma–surface interactions in future.
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