Reaction pathways for bio-active species in a He/H2O atmospheric pressure capacitive discharge

Abstract

Helium/trace gas atmospheric pressure radio-frequency (rf) capacitive discharges have increasing biomedical applications. We have performed a principal pathway analysis for a chemically complex, bounded He/H2O atmospheric pressure, planar capacitive discharge, with a discharge gap of 0.5 mm and a power of 0.85 W cm−2 at 13.56 MHz (ne ≈ 1.6 × 1017 m−3). The discharge is embedded in a larger volume in which the H2O fraction is controlled to be 0.001. The generation and loss pathways for eleven species of interest for discharge maintenance and biomedical applications have been determined. The production and consumption pathways of He*, H2O, and electrons are found to be tightly coupled. The metastable He* generated by electron impact excitation of He is mostly consumed by Penning reactions with H2O, followed by subsequent three-body association reactions with H2O, to form the dominant positive ion, . The main loss pathways for are ion cluster fragmentations at the wall, which are important generation pathways for H2O. The generation and loss pathways for electrons are almost the same as for . OH and H2O2 generation and loss are strongly coupled, and they are important intermediate species in the generation pathways for the purely O-containing bio-active species: O2(a), O, O3 and O*. The generation and loss pathways for the latter four species were found to be strongly coupled by volume and surface processes, with O2 as an important precursor. The generation of O2 from H2O involves H2O2 as a key long-lived intermediate.