A new study on the penetration of reactive species in their mass transfer processes in water by increasing the electron energy in plasmas

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In this work, the mass transfer of the reactive species from the plasmas in the water layer has been investigated by means of the numerical simulation based on the one-dimensional drift-diffusion model. The depth distributions of five main reactive species, OH, O3, HO2, O2−, and H2O2, have been presented, when considering the dissociative electron attachment (DEA) to the water molecule by increasing electron energy in the plasmas. The present work shows that the DEA to the water molecule plays an important role in the penetration of the species OH, O3, and HO2. With the increase in electron energy, HO2 quenches after the penetration depth of a few micrometers, becoming a short-living species, but the penetration depths of O3 and OH increase evidently, up to a few tens micrometers, which is of significance for the application of cold atmospheric-pressure plasmas in biomedical engineering. In addition, the contribution of each dominative reaction to production or loss of OH has also been calculated and analyzed under the different electron energies because of the importance of OH in the inactivation of biomolecules and in order to have a good knowledge of the mechanisms of OH production as well as its penetration in the water layer. The present work is a first effort toward the goal of increasing the different types of the reactive species that may interact with cellular components after the mass transfer of the plasmas in the water layer, by changing the discharge parameters of the plasmas.