Plasma device designed for consumers can quickly disinfect surfaces

Newswise — The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a harsh light on the urgent need for quick and easy techniques to sanitize and disinfect everyday high-touch objects such as doorknobs, pens, pencils, and personal protective gear worn to keep infections from spreading. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have demonstrated the first flexible, hand-held, device based on low-temperature plasma — a gas that consists of atoms, molecules, and free-floating electrons and ions — that consumers can quickly and easily use to disinfect surfaces without special training.