常壓非熱電漿應用於表面滅菌之研究回顧

A Review of Atmospheric Nonthermal Plasma Applied to the Surface Decontamination

許多產業包括生物技術、食品工業、製藥及醫療等均須仰賴滅菌技術以控制可能產生之生物性健康危害，由於傳統之滅菌技術在實際運用上具有一些限制或缺點，諸如加熱滅菌法耗時且無法適用於熱敏感性器材，化學殺菌劑可能具殘留毒性及環境汙染問題，輻射線滅菌法可能產生輻射危害等。近幾十年來，世界各地許多研究團隊均致力於開發新的滅菌技術，而低溫電漿滅菌技術的快速發展便是其中一項。常壓非熱電漿的產生方式很多，本文主要回顧近期常被研究且具實務應用潛力的兩種電漿產生方式，以及其他會影響一電漿系統滅菌效率的因素，包括電漿操作條件（如電漿製處理表面的距離、通入氣體種類與流量等）及微生物特性（如營養型/孢子型細胞、生長期、細胞密度等）。期望透過本文的回顧，提供未來開發常壓非熱電漿應用於實務滅菌時之參考。

Many industries including biotechnology, food-processing, and medical-care must rely on the sterilization method to prevent the contaminationof microorganisms. Conventional sterilization techniques have some disadvantages such as limited use on heat-sensitive materials and time-consumingprocessof heating methods, residual toxicity and environmentalpollution caused by the application of biocides, and potential radiation hazards of irradiation sterilizations. In recent years, many researchers are devoted to develop novel disinfection techniques as an alternative to the traditionalmethods. One of the rapidly developing methods is low-temperature plasma sterilization.In this article, a review of two types of popularly studied nonthermal atmospheric plasma generation system is presented. In addition to the plasma generation method, there are many factors including plasma device operation conditions (e.g.plasma-to-surface distance, feeding gas, flow rate etc.) and the characteristics of microorganisms (e.g.vegetative/spore cell, growth phase, cell loading densityetc.) that will affect the disinfection efficacy of a given plasma system.