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Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Treating Surfaces with a Cold Atmospheric Pressure Plasma using the COST-Jet
Published on: November 2, 2020
Elimination of biological contaminations from surfaces by plasma discharges: chemical sputtering
Hubert Rauscher1, Ondrej Kylián, Jan Benedikt
1Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, European Commission-Joint Research Centre, V. Fermi, 21027 Ispra, Italy. hubert.rauscher@jrc.ec.europa.eu
Abstract:
Plasma treatment of surfaces as a sterilisation or decontamination method is a promising approach to overcome limitations of conventional techniques. The precise characterisation of the employed plasma discharges, the application of sensitive surface diagnostic methods and targeted experiments to separate the effects of different agents, have led to rapid progress in the understanding of different relevant elementary processes. This contribution provides an overview of the most relevant and recent results, which reveal the importance of chemical sputtering as one of the most important processes for the elimination of biological residuals. Selected studies on the interaction of plasmas with bacteria, proteins and polypeptides are highlighted, and investigations employing beams of atoms and ions confirming the prominent role of chemical sputtering are presented. With this knowledge, it is possible to optimize the plasma treatment for decontamination/sterilisation purposes in terms of discharge composition, density of active species and UV radiation intensity.
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