Plasma and aerosols: Challenges, opportunities and perspectives

Abstract

The interaction of plasmas and liquid aerosols offers special advantages and opens new perspectives for plasma-liquid applications. The paper focuses on the key research challenges and potential of plasma-aerosol interaction at atmospheric pressure in several fields, outlining opportunities and benefits in terms of process tuning and throughputs. After a short overview of the recent achievements in plasma-liquid field, the possible application benefits from aerosol injection in combination with plasma discharge are listed and discussed. Since the nature of the chemicophysical plasma-droplet interactions is still unclear, a multidisciplinary approach is recommended to overcome the current lack of knowledge and to open the plasma communities to scientists from other fields, already active in biphasic systems diagnostic. In this perspective, a better understanding of the high chemical reactivity of gas-liquid reactions will bring new opportunities for plasma assisted in-situ and on-demand reactive species production and material processing.