Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Treatment of Dry and Water-Filled Microchannels

Atmospheric pressure plasma (APP) interactions with complex, wet surfaces have applications in biotechnology, chemical conversion and environmental remediation. Water-filled micro-channels represent one such complex surface, which may occur in treating wet woven, porous or rough surfaces for decontamination. A fundamental understanding of plasma interactions with water-filled channels would enable development of more effective methods for treating those surfaces by, for example, matching the type of plasma source with the surface chacteristics. The surface may consist of both dry and wet (water-filled) channels. Plasma surface ionization waves (SIWs) interacting with these structures would likely be sensitive to the adjacency of wet and dry channels through polarization of the water-filled channels or by electric enhancement at the edges of the dry channels. In this presentation, we discuss results from a computational investigation of APP treatment of open (dry) and water-filled dielectric channels with sizes on the order of hundreds of microns. The goal is to quantify the consequences of the adjacency of such channels on the plasma propagation.