Effectiveness and Efficiency Optimization Study of Oxygen and Argon DC Low Pressure Plasma Sterilization

Low-pressure plasmas have been evaluated as a promising method in biomedical prosecutions, especially in sterilization applications, as an alternative to “conventional” methods which have numerous drawbacks. There are only a few commercially available sterilization or decontamination devices based on plasma activity. Hence, the aim of this work was to perform an optimization study regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of DC low pressure plasma sterilization, using oxygen and argon as antimicrobial active components. The effectiveness on killing bacteria, specifically E. coli, is measured by counting CFU after treatment, for each set of factors: exposure time and power, using a full factorial general design of experiments. Finally, the analysis proves that the oxygen sterilization is more cost effective than argon for the set of parameters used.