Improvement of osseointegration efficacy of titanium implant through plasma surface treatment.

A novel plasma treatment source for generating cylindrical plasma on the surface of titanium dental implants is developed herein. Using the titanium implant as an electrode and the packaging wall as a dielectric barrier, a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma was generated, allowing the implant to remain sterile. Numerical and experimental investigations were conducted to determine the optimal discharge conditions for eliminating hydrocarbon impurities, which are known to degrade the bioactivity of the implant. XPS measurement confirmed that plasma treatment reduced the amount of carbon impurities on the implant surface by approximately 60%. Additionally, in vitro experiments demonstrated that the surface treatment significantly improved cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Collectively, we proposed a plasma treatment source for dental implants that successfully removes carbon impurities and facilitate the osseointegration of SLA implants.

Forced convective heating for low-temperature sterilization.

A novel impermeable sterile pouch is developed to allow the forced convective heating mechanism for improving the sterilization cycle. The heating process is parametrically investigated to obtain an optimized condition in which a sterilization load is heated from 20 to 45 °C within 2 min, and the forced convection is experimentally and numerically analyzed to find that the convection coefficient is dramatically increased to 450 W/m2 K when compared with the conventional natural convection coefficient of 80 W/m2 K. The optimized heating process is applied to a sterilization cycle using the impermeable pouch, and the overall sterilization cycle is found to be completed within 7.5 min whose performance is validated by using a process challenge device.

Curing of ground ham by remote infusion of atmospheric non-thermal plasma.

This study investigated the changes in the nitrite content and temperature of meat batter with the remote infusion of atmospheric non-thermal plasma (ANP) and the quality properties of ground hams cured by remote infusion of ANP. Remote infusion of ANP for 14.78 min generated 100 mg kg-1 of nitrite in 3.2 kg meat batter, and the meat batter temperature increased from 1.8 to 9.2 °C. The residual nitrite content of ground ham cured by the remote infusion of ANP (RANP) was higher than that of ground ham cured with sodium nitrite (SN) at 1 day of storage (p < 0.05); however, no difference between RANP and SN was observed after 30 days of storage (p > 0.05). The color and malondialdehyde content of ground hams did not differ between RANP and SN during storage (p > 0.05). The remote infusion ANP system could be applied to cure meat products without the addition of nitrite sources.