Plasma for biomedical decontamination: from plasma-engineered to plasma-active antimicrobial surfaces

Modern society is suffering from many infectious microbes. Developing antimicrobial surfaces for biomedical decontamination and sterilization is one of the strategic solutions to mitigate the spread of infectious pathogens. Here, we outline the paradigm of plasmas for biomedical decontamination by presenting approaches of plasma-engineered antimicrobial surfaces and novel plasma-active antimicrobial surfaces. Low-temperature plasma can not only be used as a material fabrication tool for antimicrobial surface engineering but also be used directly for microbial inactivation by specially designed plasma-active surfaces that can effectively destroy microorganisms through exposure to plasma. The role of plasmas in the two different kinds of antimicrobial surfaces is discussed along with their associated advantages and disadvantages. Future research directions, challenges, and opportunities in both plasma-based antimicrobial surfaces are also critically evaluated. This analysis contributes to the development of next-generation antimicrobial surfaces for future bio-safety.

Future antiviral polymers by plasma processing.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is largely threatening global public health, social stability, and economy. Efforts of the scientific community are turning to this global crisis and should present future preventative measures. With recent trends in polymer science that use plasma to activate and enhance the functionalities of polymer surfaces by surface etching, surface grafting, coating and activation combined with recent advances in understanding polymer-virus interactions at the nanoscale, it is promising to employ advanced plasma processing for smart antiviral applications. This trend article highlights the innovative and emerging directions and approaches in plasma-based surface engineering to create antiviral polymers. After introducing the unique features of plasma processing of polymers, novel plasma strategies that can be applied to engineer polymers with antiviral properties are presented and critically evaluated. The challenges and future perspectives of exploiting the unique plasma-specific effects to engineer smart polymers with virus-capture, virus-detection, virus-repelling, and/or virus-inactivation functionalities for biomedical applications are analysed and discussed.