The quality by design approach for optimization of slayer exciter based low power portable atmospheric plasma jet on bactericidal efficacy of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

A simple, portable, economical low-temperature atmospheric plasma (LTAP) for bactericidal efficacy of Gram-negative bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) with different carrier gases (argon, helium, and nitrogen) using the quality by design (QbD) approach, design of experiments (DoE), and response surface graphs (RSG) is presented. Box-Behnken design was used as the DoE to narrow down and further optimize the experimental factors of LTAP. Plasma exposure time, input DC voltage, and carrier gas flow rate were varied to examine the bactericidal efficacy using the zone of inhibition (ZOI). A higher bactericidal efficacy was achieved under the optimal bactericidal factors having ZOI of 50.837 ± 2.418 mm2 with the plasma power density of 132 mW/cm3 for LTAP-Ar at 61.19 s, 14.8747 V, and 219.379 sccm than LTAP-He and LTAP-N2 . The LTAP-Ar was further evaluated at different frequencies and probe lengths to achieve a ZOI of 58.237 ± 4.01 mm2 .

Influence of laser and alkali treatment on an Ag/TiO2nanotube based dopamine sensor.

Herein, TiO2nanotubes (T-NTs) arrays were subjected to two types of treatment followed by a simple metal deposition technique to significantly enhance the performances of T-NTs based electrochemical sensing of dopamine. The first type of treatment was done by soaking T-NTs in sodium hydroxide solution for an optimal time to enhance the conductivity and charge carrier density. The second type of treatment employed was laser irradiation, which induces crystallinity disorder and forms rutile TiO2, promoting active analyte adsorption sites. Afterward, silver (Ag) was electro-deposited on the T-NTs as a dopamine sensing catalyst to form T-NTs/Ag nanohybrids. The dual-treated T-NTs based sensor showed 3-fold enhancement in sensitivity (from 8.2µA mM-1cm-2to 32µA mM-1cm-2), reduced charge transfer resistance (from 38 × 10-6Ω to 0.7 × 10-6Ω), above 2 order higher donor charge density (from 3.58 × 1018cm-3to 1.41 × 1021cm-3), and reduced limit of detection (from 32.3µM to 2.8µM) in comparison to plain T-NTs based sensor. In addition, the sensitivity reported here is significantly higher than most of the previously reported TiO2based dopamine sensors. Perspective-wise, the dual treatment approach is a promising technique and is highly desirable for enhancing the performances of T-NTs and other nanomaterial based electrochemical sensors.