Section Days abstract book 2010.indd - RUB Research School ...

NSE_23
MICROBIOLOGICAL AND PLASMA PHYSICAL
CHARACTERISATION OF A VHF FREE
OSCILLATING SYSTEM
Katharina Stapelmann, Egmont Semmler, Nikita Bibinov and Peter Awakowicz
Institute for Electrical Engineering and Plasma Technology
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
e-mail: stapelmann@aept.rub.de
Cleaning, sterilization and decontamination of medical instruments are key processes in the
medical field and in pharmacological industry. The main objective of these processes is to
remove, inactivate or destroy all pathogens in order to prevent infections, inflammations or
transmission of diseases connected to their presence. However, the traditionally employed
techniques suffer from certain limitations. Therefore a new sterilization and decontamination
technique is urgently required. One promising alternative is plasma sterilisation, which is the
topic of this presentation.
|A plasma sterilization setup has been built and characterized. First microbiological tests show
promising results. A reduction of 10 6 germs is possible within seconds. These results as well
as the basic physical characterization with optical emission spectroscopy and temperature
measurements will be presented and discussed.