Characterization and Effects of Ar/Air Microwave Plasma on Wound Healing

Abstract

Using Ar/Air mixture microwave plasma, we investigated the effects of air and gas temperature on the generation of electrons, ozone (O-3), and nitric oxide (NO) through experiments and chemical kinetics simulation. The global model (GM) chemical kinetics simulation was used to validate and complement experimental observations. As the air percentages in Ar plasma increase, electrons are mainly generated by reactive oxygen species (ROS), but electron densities decrease. This is why plasma jet length becomes shorter with the mixture of air to Ar plasma at the same power. The profile of O-3 densities has a maximum point because these are affected by oxygen (O-2) molecules and gas temperature. O-3 densities increase because these are generated via recombination of atomic oxygen (O) and O-2 radicals as the air percentages increase. As the gas temperature increases, O-3 densities decrease and O-3 radicals are mainly destroyed by ROS such as O-2(-), excited O-2, and O, although air percentages increase. NO radicals increase continually with the addition of air mixture and increase in gas temperature. With respect to biomedical applications, in the case of Ar/Air plasma treatment, it takes just 2 d, which has reduced the wound area to 30% because of faster scab formation over the wound and mRNA activation. Abundant NO radicals with ROS in Ar/aAir plasma strongly enhance IL-6 and TGF-beta 1, which facilitate collagen remodeling and wound recovery effectively.