Non-thermal atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge plasma source construction and investigation on the effect of grid on wound healing application

Abstract

Non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma sources are already known as an attractive devices for therapeutic applications including wound healing. The purpose of this investigation was to construct a portable device for skin wound healing. A planar atmospheric pressure Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma device was constructed. The effect of using mesh grid with DBD device was investigated for uniformity treatment of skin wounds. Reactive Nitrogen and Oxygen species were observed in the optical emission spectrum. The experiments were performed in two phases, using the DBD plasma device with/without mesh grid. In each phase, the comparison was performed between the naturally healed wounds and stimulated wounds treated daily (5 days) for 30s. The reduction of wound area, morphological changes in wounds and tissue histological parameters were analysed. The wounds treated with DBD device with mesh grid were healed faster than the control wounds and the wounds treated with DBD device without mesh grid became more inflamed and they burned as well as the wound area were increased until 8th day of wounding. It is concluded that the DBD device with mesh grid has the ability of wound healing uniformly and without grid, the electrical shock imposed to the mice body prevents natural healing.