| Plasma is the fourth state of matters that breaks a gas into free particles including: electrons, positive and negative ions, reactive radicals and neutral Atoms and molecules. Polar aurorae, lightning, the sun and stars are examples of naturally generated plasma. One can also generate artificial plasma such as in fluorescent light. In semiconductor industry, many of the manufacturing process employ low pressure RF plasmas for creating and treating thin films. Plasma can also be employed for biomedical applications such as sterilization, surface modification of implant materials and for augmenting surgery. Electrosurgery is one of the common medical tools to simultaneously cut biological tissue and coagulate blood flow. Basically, electrosurgery use thermal energy generated by ohmic heating P=I2R in the incision region. The heat spreads out from the incision region and damages contiguous nearby tissue that may lead to delayed wound healing and increased postoperative pain. A combination of electrosurgery and plasma chemistry will be presented for tissue removal with less heat generation but maintaining fast dissection of bulk tissue. Reactive chemical species such as OH and Cl were generated to provide chemical reaction in addition to the I2R thermal reaction for tissue removal. In addition, tooth whitening with hybrid water-gas plasma will be presented as tooth stain removal with high density of reactive OH generated by argon plasma in DI water. This CSU plasma tooth whitening is free from using high density of toxic hydrogen peroxide and has short treatment time compared to the conventional H2O2 treatment. |
