The Plasma Pencil: A Source of Hypersonic Cold Plasma Bullets for Biomedical Applications

Cold plasma jets and their interaction with materials and media have recently been very active research topics. The low gas temperature enables applications in various fields, including medicine. In bioapplications, for example, it involves radiation and reactive species created by the plasma jet to modify or kill prokaryotic cells (bacteria) or eukaryotic cells (mammalian cells). In this paper, we present photographs of a pulsed cold plasma plume/jet that turned out to be a series of high-velocity plasma ldquobulletsrdquo or ldquopackets.rdquo These bullets travel at hypersonic speeds, and these transport with them chemically reactive species and deliver them to the surface of samples under treatment.